The Tat, The Bat, and the Apothecary

tl;dr — this is a story about half-baked tattoo ideas, bats with glitchy echolocation, trying something you're not good at, and fully baked tattoo ideas.

A note for the reader: In my previous newsletter, First Things First and Long Story Short, I always started the newsletter with a quote from a TV character that related to the story I was about to tell. I wouldn’t reveal who the quote was from (just to test the reader’s pop culture knowledge) until the end of the story. Today’s story will feature three quotes because I simply could not pick just one this time.

I got my first tattoo when I was eighteen years old. My best friend and I each planned what we would get, and then conspired a plan to get it without our parents knowing. Since it wasn’t uncommon for teens in our small town to take trips to the beach, we figured it would be easy to casually request permission from each set of parents to head out of town for the day.

Maybe now is a good time to mention I was sneaking around to get a tattoo dedicated to my newfound love for Jesus (as one does). I decided to get a pair of footprints to represent “the beautiful feet of those who bring good news” (Romans 10:15). Eighteen-year-old Alicia was convinced she’d be able to share about Jesus to anyone who inquired about her tattoo. This was a foolproof plan.

And before you think to yourself, “This isn’t so bad, Alicia. I mean, all things considered, it could have been a lot worse”—I should probably also mention I got the tattoo on my lower back.¹ I’ll let that detail sink into the depths of your soul where you keep all your cringe-inducing memories from the past.

Instead of black ink, I requested brown. “So you want a fake henna tattoo,” the tattoo artist joked. I’m guessing he said this because getting a real henna tattoo was all the rage for youth visiting the beach.

I laughed nervously at his subpar joke. “Ha, yeah…I guess so!”

He then informed me the brown ink would fade or darken with my skin, depending on how much sun exposure it received. Since I banked on sunbathing for the rest of my life and always having sun-kissed skin, I wasn’t too worried about the future of my tattoo.²

Fast forward seventeen years (having lived another lifetime since I got my first tattoo), I decided to get inked up again. This time, another best friend convinced me to do it. This time, I was a mom of four. And this time, getting a tattoo would require a plane trip to another island.

My friend did her research and found a reputable tattoo artist in the capital city. She was so reputable, in fact, we had to book an appointment with her six months in advance. This meant we had plenty of time to decide what we wanted and/or discern whether or not we were going through some version of a midlife crisis.

The months on the calendar flipped by until Tattoo Month was upon us. My idea for a tattoo had been decided. My down payment for the appointment had been paid. My plane ticket had been purchased.

Then, three days prior to my departure date, I felt like absolute garbage. I stayed in bed for two days with flu-like symptoms before willing myself to get out of bed the day before I had to leave. I was nauseous, I had no appetite whatsoever, my lower back and legs ached, and my brain felt so foggy. I couldn’t string two thoughts together to save my life.

I contemplated cancelling the trip, but how does one back out of a tattoo appointment that’s been booked for six months? How could I abandon my friend at the eleventh hour like that?

I went to a clinic to have an antigen test done. The results were negative for COVID. I had been fever-free for twenty-four hours. Maybe I would get better as the days went on, I reasoned. I made up my mind to push onward with the trip. The next morning, at dark-thirty o’ clock, I hugged my husband, got into my taxi, and popped mints into my mouth for the entire trip to soothe my nausea.

Once my flight had touched down in the capital city, I looked at my phone and saw a message from my husband.

“Look what the kids and I found…”

Bats swoop in the back area of our house all the time, scooping up bugs as they fly to and fro. Most of the time, they stay away from our porch—but, on occasion, they’ve dipped below the covering and swooped just above our heads.

You can tell me all you know about bats and echolocation and how “they might be blind, but they know exactly where they’re going”—but it will never convince me that a bat won’t fly smack-dab into my face at any given moment.

My husband once got trapped in a tent with a bat. He and his friend managed to catch it, but before they let it go, they wanted to get a closer look at this elusive creature of the night. They held it by its wings and stuck a twig at its mouth. The bat promptly destroyed the twig into a dozen tiny pieces with its rows of razor-sharp teeth.

That’s a nope, nope, nooope for me.

So, upon receiving the text message, “look what the kids and I found,” I stared in disgust at the photo attached. One can see why my skepticism about echolocation was further exacerbated by a picture of a dead bat lying limp on the back porch.

“Maybe it hit the ceiling fan,” I texted back my theory.

“I’m pretty sure the fan was off,” my husband responded.

“What did you do with it,” I asked.

“I got a stick, hooked it under the bat’s feet³, and threw it in the ditch,” he replied.

By this point, I was in a taxi. I turned my phone off, because solving a dead bat mystery while in stop-and-go traffic was not helping my ongoing nausea. I popped another mint into my mouth and closed my eyes. Whatever I was sick with was not getting better like I had hoped. If anything, I was slowly depleting what little energy I had left.

But on the morning of our tattoo appointment, adrenaline must have kicked in. The sudden burst of energy certainly wasn’t coming from my steady diet of extra-strength Tylenol and mints.

This was happening. I was really going to get a tattoo, and I had never felt better. (That is, until the adrenaline wore off and I was reminded that I still felt like garbage.)

In 2020, while the world was baking sourdough bread, I decided to dabble in candle making. I brainstormed a fun idea to make the candles in a coffee mug so I could gift it to friends. They’d receive a candle AND a coffee mug after burning the whole candle. I decided on a name: Mugwicks. I came up with a logo. I even came up with three signature scents: The Reader, The Writer, and The Creative. The only detail I hadn’t figured out with the whole candle-making process was, well, how to make a decent candle.

Once border restrictions were lifted and we were able to return to Indonesia, I had to press pause on my creative outlet. I decided to pack up and carry the candle-making supplies and essential oils across the globe, in the event I wanted to pick the hobby back up again.

But like most of the short-lived hobbies many of us dabbled in during the global pandemic, I didn’t immediately return to the craft of candle making. Life gradually returned to normal(ish) and my days filled up with other things.

It wasn’t until the holidays were upon us that my husband decided it would be fun (and more budget-friendly) to make our own holiday candles with the supplies we already had on hand. While I had creative ideas for candle scent names and branding, my husband had a key skillset I lacked—a mind built for understanding measurements, ratios, and calculating the proper amount of oil needed per ounce of wax.

It was an absolute delight to figure out a new hobby alongside my husband. With our creative powers combined, we were developing some pretty outstanding soy-based⁴ candles. We’d really found our candle-making groove—that is, until I was bed-ridden with flu-like symptoms a couple days before heading out of town to get a tattoo…

---

My new tattoo is inspired by the work of a visual artist and poet, Anatol Knotek, called “The Solution.”

The original artwork is a wall displaying the words, “the problem.” However, the letters r, b, and l are seen falling down. What remained?

The p o  em.

As soon as I saw this visual art, I felt it deep in my soul. I had just finished reading Adorning the Dark by Andrew Peterson and it reminded me of something he said:

“Steven Pressfield’s book, The War of Art, describes what he calls “Resistance”— a mysterious force in the world that seems to challenge every creative act. He talks about the way we have to fight an opposing force in order to bring something beautiful into the world. There is a Resistance (Eph. 6:12) and if you’re called to speak light into the darkness, then believe this: the darkness wants to shut you up.”

When my friend convinced me to get a tattoo with her, I knew I wanted mine to be a version of Knotek’s, “The Solution.”

There is so much darkness in this world, and a Resistance trying to keep Light out. We are creative people made in the image of our Creator and we can use our creative gifts to adorn the darkness. We are called and equipped to leave the space we occupy a little more beautiful, and a little brighter, than we found it.

The placement of my tattoo is on the wrist of my right hand—my writing hand—to remind me of why I write. I write because I want to fight the resisting darkness of this world with my words—not with harsh words or offensive words, but with words that bring joy, hope, and maybe a smile to the reader’s face.

And so, I tell you stories about bats and the half-baked tattoo of my teen years and about being an amateur candle maker and getting another tattoo in my thirties while plagued with some mysterious illness.⁵

I want, as Brian Doyle once said, “to catch stories by their brilliant tails as they rocket by, carve and sculpt them into arrows, and fire them into the hearts of as many people as I can reach on this bruised and blessed planet.” It’s hard for darkness to overcome us when we’ve got that joy (joy, joy, joy) down in our hearts.

I guess what I’m trying to say is…
let’s keep taking the problems of this world and turning them into
p  o   ems.

  r     l

    b

TV Quotes:

“For your information this is exactly what I wanted. This is a tattoo of the earth as seen from a great distance.” — Phoebe Buffay, FRIENDS

“The bat. I mean, I know I felt it bite me but look there's no mark. I feel so tingly...so strangely powerful... [pause] Oh well.” — Jim Halpert, The Office

“When I get frustrated or irritated or angry, I just come up here and I smell all my candles, and it just ~poof~ goes away.” — Jan Levinson, The Office

1. At the time, I was not aware of the other name for lower back tattoos. I also only showed my lower back when I was in a two-piece swimsuit. Did I mention I was 18 when I decided this was a foolproof plan?

2. Several years later, all it took were two suspicious moles needing to be removed from my chest and the back of my arm to convince me my sunbathing days were over. My tattoo from my teens years eventually faded away completely (yes, seriously). I think that earns me the title of Luckiest Teen of the 2000s Who Decided to Get a Tattoo at the Beach.

3. If you’re wondering how a stick would be sufficient to carry a bat by its feet all the way through the house to the ditch in front of our house, my husband informed me, “the bat’s feet were like candy canes.” The more you know 🌈✨

4. Full disclosure: we started using fragrance oil instead of essential oil. So, while soy-based candles sounds like a crunchy, healthy candle—we might have undone any “natural” benefits by using toxic fragrance oils. Maybe the candle brand has more of a “kid of the 80/90s” vibe—a little dose of vitamin D from riding bikes all day, mixed with a little bit of chemicals from all the highly processed foods we ate.

5. As it turns out, I had dengue. The whole time I was worried about bats, and it was a tiny mosquito that took me down.