Cumplimos años

My tattoo turned a decade old today.

I got it in Spain, near the red-light district in Madrid, at a vintage clothing store that also served, to my delight, as a tattoo parlor. I spent weeks sizing up the place, returning with some frequency to revise racks of clothing and thumb through pages of designs, trying to appear as non-committal as possible.

After months of this silent, one-sided courtship, an employee finally approached me and reassured that they could have me pinned down, inked up, and ready for a family lunch in under an hour. I muttered a few unintelligible phrases in Spanish and quickly backed out of the store, just as my fear was giving way to a complete loss of self-control and proper bodily function. It was clear to me: she who hates needles would need more time. So, I considered more designs.

I contemplated a Japanese fish and even glanced at an Egyptian eye.

Finally, though, I settled on a sun. Just a sun. Although, really, it’s a sun people often mistake for a wheel, which is just as good, in my opinion. It reminds me of Apollo in his chariot, dragging a huge, fiery disk across the sky, and thus giving rise and rest to the day. It reminds me of the word revolution: change and continuity.

I can’t attribute my tattoo to any famous artist, or some raucous night of partying. Rather, it was born of the imagination and intuition of a 17-year-old girl who knew that no matter how far she wandered from home—and, at times, it would be far—the sun would always shine on her back as her head and heart faced the future. It marks the decision I made to become a part of the world—the kind of birth I could control.

My tattoo turned ten today. The canvass it graces turned 27.