A couple of years ago for our wedding anniversary Chuck and I got tattoos. I mean, what do you get for the couple that has everything, right? Body art seemed a brilliant plan.
I knew what I wanted. I wanted a kanji symbol on the inside of my right forearm. I wanted prosperity, but when we got to the tattoo parlor they didn't have it. Then I picked harmony. It seemed an appropriate sentiment for ones wedding anniversary.
So that was two years ago.
I've always been vaguely suspect about my tattoo. In my heart I feared that it said Stupid Round Eye. But it is very pretty and I decided that it meant what I wanted it to mean, which was harmony.
Fast forward to about a 18 months ago. I was in a Japanese restaurant with some friends. I asked the waiter about my kanji. He couldn't read it. He then had the sushi chef and two other waiters come over and look. They all mumbled something and then one volunteered that it was an old style of writing and that they thought it was a number or something.
Then super fast foward to two weeks ago. I was in my Orange County office with the man who does millwork for me, Mr. Lee. Mr. Lee is from Burma and speaks and reads five different dialects of Chinese. He saw my tattoo, apparently for the first time. He said it was beautiful, and that it means two coming together as one. I told him that it was supposed to say harmony.
And it does.
Posted by beth at June 19, 2003 07:31 PM