Dear Roger: Stevie Rae-Music, Monkeys and Sunshine, or How I let my 6 y/o Design My Next Tattoo

My small daughter is a force of nature. The fact that she is alive and kicking after what she was born into, is a testimony to her will. She was born 6 weeks premature,sick to a sick mom during an emergency c-section. We both spent 10 days in the hospital with just each other for company while I recovered from heart problems and she recovered from an infection and other issues. She was a tiny little thing, but fierce and demanding, and from the get go she had me wrapped around her little finger,much like anyone else she happens to meet. She was named for a hell of a Texas Blues guitar man and a Hells Angel and there are days when I believe she channels both of them. She is brave and fearless and tough, but with a delicate femininity that I really dont know how to deal with sometimes. She has butt-length blonde curly hair that is a challenge for me to take care of, but she gets really pissed off when someone mentions cutting it, " I am a GIRL, not a boy, I am supposed to have long hair!" She insists on wearing dresses or skirts most days and picks out her own outfits that are often wildly exotic combinations that oddly enough work. She wears boots most of the time,(like her hero,Jackson Rathbone), and she coordinates them with her choice of stuffie for the day. She GOES hard all day long, and has never been one to take naps, she dances and pirouettes all the damn time and just trying to keep up with her is an exhausting feat.

Her passions are as varied as her moods, though a few have remained consistent over the last few years. She loves to draw,dance,sing, and she LOVES the 100 Monkeys and Jackson Rathbone. She knew the music before the knew of the guy and the first song she ever really started singing was,'Keep Awake", unfortunately she decided to sing it in her kindergarten class and that is how the principal and I got to be on a first name basis. She cut me quite a bit of slack because she knew that I was doing the best I could as a parent, considering I was on my own with my kids, dealing with PTSD due to years of Domestic Violence, and then not one but 2 cancer scares that hit me, the loss of 3 close friends within 6 months, a winter where we got 12 feet of snow, my oldest son being in Texas, and just a huge shit storm of horrors that made life misery, and the 100 Monkeys were our sunshine, that is what Stevie called them,"Our Sunshine" because in the dark, sad, hard, days when we didnt have enough money for food, and I was soo damn sick I couldn't move, we had their goofy music to cheer us up and make us smile and to keep us moving forward. Soo, we had a family meeting the other day and we were discussing just random wants, needs, and hopes for the next few months and I mentioned that after I get financially a little better off, I am going to get another tattoo, and while I had a design in mind, it was decided that we are not going to keep reliving the dark and the past, we are here and happy and moving forward and our days are now filled with music and even though its known for being overcast and rainy up here, we have sunshine and light for the first time in over a decade, and in fact my son telling me that he has never seen me smile so much in his whole life, has really affected me, and I am trying to make sure I focus on things that are positive and happy every day, so my new tattoo that is going on my left forearm to cover up some scars is not going to be,"Memento Mori" with a bunch of other symbolic stuff, Oh Nooooo, its going to be what my enamored and artistic daughter suggested; a band of sock monkeys, all with distinct characteristics, and backed by a bright orange sun. I started sketching it out last night, based off some pictures from the concert we attended.Stevie has her own take on the idea, but it wont fit on my arm and my back is already tatted up with dark stuff and the scars on my neck are going to remain as a reminder that even in the sunshine sometimes the shade creeps in.