My sister is sending me on an Odyssey.

I feel it in my bones.

Oh and also, I’m getting a tattoo.

On Valentine’s Day at 3pm.

Have I gotten your attention yet?

I really thought I would get up this morning and write about our fantastic afternoon/evening celebration yesterday for my Dad’s birthday (which I will).

But this takes precedence at the moment.

I’m bringing it all back to my Treasure Map too as it’s started the treasure hunting process — I didn’t officially hang it up until last week and boy has it activated in my life.

It got me to the Ecstatic Dance on Sunday morning although I’ve been resisting going for some unknown reason for months.  That’s a mystery really as this kind of dance/movement is totally my thing and something I’ve devoted a lot of my life too.  This group meets at a studio very near my house where people drive from all over the Valley to congregate at.  It’s at a perfect time for me (when I’m in town).  It’s something I love.

Anyway, who cares about the resistance, I got there.

We danced for close to two hours and at the end I laid on the floor in the “legs up the wall” yoga pose for the last two songs and had this clear as a bell thought blast in to my brain.

You are getting a tattoo and this is what and this is where.

No questions or weird uh oh’s around this thought.  Clear as a bell, calm as a whisper it just arrived.

I came home, started doing my research, have my basic design and yesterday it all unfolded in an even more magical way.

I’ve had plans for weeks to go out with my darling friend Andrea for Valentine’s Day.  Our plan was to go out salsa dancing.  Yet when I started thinking about this tattoo, and the fact that I believe in the importance of ritual, I realized I really wanted to do it on Valentine’s Day.  Neither of us was finding a great place to go dancing but we definitely were going out.  I was thinking of asking her to go with me for the tattoo but didn’t want to mess up our plans.

So, when I shared a cryptic “I’m getting a tattoo” on Facebook, she wrote the comment “Awesome!! Instead of dancing, let’s get yr tat and celebrate it over dinner!”.  Now read that with her South African accent and you’ve got the complete experience.

Hallelujah!  Just what I wanted!  No disappointment anywhere!

It gets better now.

Yesterday my friend Marianne was still over as she came over Sun. night to watch Downton Abbey and stayed (which turned in to 3 other shows as well til midnight and a slumber party!).  She knows tons of people with tattoos at the restaurant where she works and threw out a name of a tattoo parlor they go to.

I looked it up, saw the portfolio of a gal there and loved it.  Lo and behold, she had openings for Friday afternoon! Perfect!

Now that timing didn’t work out for Andrea BUT in the middle of all this, my friend Aaron texts me “hey I’ve been wanting to get a specific tattoo for 20 years, let’s do this together!”.  Eureka!

He got the appt. after mine saying “I’ll hold your hand through yours and you hold my hand through mine”.  Awwwww…

Aaron also busted in to tears when I texted him what I was getting.

All I’ll say is it incorporates Cindy’s signature.

Just her first name.  And a little flower she used to draw.

That’s just part of it.

Whew!  This is a lot to write as so much has happened in the last 48 hours on this front!

Andrea is coming to meet us when she’s out of her meeting and we’ll all go out and have a celebration.  I’ve been wanting to introduce the two of them anyway for awhile and now that they’re both single………….uh huh, that.

What an incredibly meaningful and fun Valentine’s Day this is turning out to be.  Love is in the air!

So….back to the Odyssey.

I woke up this morning realizing I need to find a copy of Cindy’s signature today as tomorrow I’m headed up to Sedona for two nights then will be basically back home, working then headed to the tattoo shop.

I got out of bed, brushed my teeth and went straight to my guest room closet and on an archeological dig.

I can’t begin to process all I found, some things I had absolutely no idea I was even in possession of–how is that even possible?

My mother’s last wallet with the photos she placed in it, letters she wrote to both my Grandma’s as she was dying.  A letter she wrote to Cindy and I while she was in the hospital (I’ve not even read it yet; there’s another moment for that).

she called me “katie” but spelled it “KT”

So many photos, so many mementos.  Just impossible to even chew much less digest.

And then I found it.

The thing I’ve been searching for, literally for years, maybe decades.  I thought I’d lost it.

The Ziggy card.

Back in 1979 I’d guess, Cindy and I were living together in a house in Normal, IL while we were in college. We nicknamed that house “Deliria House”.

One night, a school night, a friend of mine who was also a hair dresser convinced me to do this henna treatment on my mousy blonde hair.  She came to the house with her supplies and applied this seaweed masque type glop to my hair in kitchen. The kitchen without a mirror.

She rinsed it off in the kitchen sink and said these kiss of death words “wow you have a lot of red in your hair”.

My hair does not have red in it but that green crap turned my hair bright orange.  Not any kind of normal redhead type color but neon orange!

yes, basically this – also henna but she looks like she likes it

Now in this particular phase of my life I prided myself being kind of a granola girl–natural.  No one was dying their hair back then. At least no one cool was.

And now I had this bright orange hideous hair!  She ran immediately to the hair supply place and got this color remover stuff that sort of took the edge off but just say I was a redhead for months after that and I was not happy.

That’s putting it mildly.  I actually got very depressed over it, my stupid decision, my vanity gone bad.  It brought out a dark demon in me and I wouldn’t leave the house or go to classes.  Ok truth be told, I sat inside and basically smoked pot when I wasn’t going to work (and getting teased).

I came home one evening and this card was waiting for me.

She just had way with me (tears now).  She just had the right words and more than that, the right timing.

I’ve literally heard these words in my head since 1979 (how many years is that now?  35?  Wow.).

  Unlike Ziggy, at least you’ve got hair!

That’s the signature (on that card) that’s going in my tattoo this Friday.

I won’t lose it again.

i sent myself this set of essays from my teenage self to the future

I walked downstairs with a few of these mementos she sent me to find and realized she’s sending me on a treasure hunt.

letter from an old sweetheart from 1988 who i found out recently passed suddenly two years ago

Things are pivoting; I can feel it.

Something or someone is coming; I know it.

And I’m not alone on this journey, of this I’m sure.

Let’s go.