is a single mama in the city, super-savvy editor, writer, video host and shameless shoe whore.
35 candles, one belly
Tuesday, April 17, 2007 
The beautiful thing is, life goes on. And today, my friends, is my birthday.
I was having a bit of trouble with this one, with turning 35. It's one of those unsettling mid-marks that begins the slide toward another new decade. I was taking that all very seriously until I remembered yesterday that I was having the same trouble turning 25.
Looking back on that, looking back on myself with my flippy denim skirt and combat boots, silver hoops stacked up my ear and a shiny new belly piercing, it all seems quite silly. I was so young then and I took for granted how beautiful my belly looked, newly adorned with a perfectly-centered sterling ring.
I was in Oregon, immersed in graduate school and teaching and learning and protests and publishing an anthology. My good friends surprised me by taking me to have the piercing placed in my naked navel. I was terrified. And thrilled.
My friends stood just beyond the curtained cubicle while I held the ring I chose from a large glass case in my hand. A big, gruff-looking bearded man stood silently over me with the tools. Placing a gentle hand over the curve of my stomach, he said softly, "The round bellies are the best for piercing" and then swiftly pushed a needle through my skin and eased the ring in.
It was painful, but no more so than the years of body-cursing I'd been putting myself through. And it was beautiful, so I let the piercing become my passage into empowerment, into loving this one round bit of my not-enough body.
Ten years later, I miss that belly. It is a little bit rounder now and marked by the pull of a pregnancy and a surprise surgery.
I no longer lace up my big black boots to walk confidently but I do stand taller in my snakeskin heels and in my bare feet planted on my yoga mat.
My ears are no longer adorned with seven earrings but I my boy lights up when he sees me put two in most mornings with an "Oooh! Mommy, you're so fancy!"
I no longer look to my belly to find empowerment but I find it in my writing, in my connections with people, in quiet meditation, in laughing with my husband and knowing that together we created a life that grew deep beneath the shiny ring that held (and still holds) so much meaning.
I thought about embellishing an old tattoo or even getting a new and much tinier piercing in my nose to mark this half-decade birthday. I'm not sure if that thought was an attempt to recapture a bit of same twentysomething spirit or to mark who I am today on the body that I wear now.
I'm not sure whether the 25-year old alterna-grrrl will emerge in the 35-year old alterna-mommy, inked or pierced or just reminiscent of that birthday, of that body, of that life. Of that hand, rested on a quivering belly. Of that surge of beauty and power just in being as fully me as I could be at 25. Now 35, now scarred and evolving and amazed at all that ten years has brought, both shiny and ordinary, momentary and lasting, surprising and inevitable, perfectly centered and continually round.
[photo credit: p. ovenden]
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