Stars in June
June has been a big month for us. It is littered with wonderful answers to prayer in the midst of a hard situation. D had been affected in early April by a mass layoff at his company, and as the job search wore on, we got bolder and more specific with our prayers. Every one of them was answered, and the biggest upshot of June was that D has a new job; a great new job that is the right next step for him.
June is also full of other milestones for our family. P graduated from middle school with a bang and is now officially a 9th grader. His chemistry teacher (note that P was taking HIGH SCHOOL chemistry in 8th grade) unofficially gave him something along the lines of a "most improved" class award. He told P that he had seen how hard P had worked to implement his constructive criticism, and he wanted to give P the chance at ending up with an A. He gave him a couple of last-minute extra credit opportunities. P rose to the occasion and ended up with JUST enough points to round up to an official 90%! Since he was taking Honors Algebra II and advanced science in 8th grade, his grades actually will end up on his high school transcript, so this was a big win for P. He is kicking off high school by starting to work his way through biology over the summer. He also has the opportunity to do an NCSU College of Engineering computer programming camp online this week.
L finished out 10th grade with a cumulative unweighted GPA of 3.96. He was able to get his Teen Level 2 driver's license painlessly, what with the road tests being temporarily waived due to COVID19, and turned around the next day and took his first solo flight, driving off to Enso for several hours of volunteer training. He is now heading off to Raleigh all by himself 4 days a week to help his tricking coach run the Enso summer camps. He is more than qualified, after spending so many hours teaching Taekwondo Mighty Kids, and we've had a glowing report of his performance. This volunteer work gives him some experience and helps build his resume, but he gets "paid" by having some training time 3 days a week to trick on the spring floor when camp is over. Honestly, he would work for less than that. And he's starting to genuinely love D's old red truck. He is already missing the alone time in the car this week, as he stays home to participate in the online NCSU computer programming camp along with P.
E started her first online class in June. It's a summer writing course, and of course she loves it—although it is definitely stretching her. She's figuring out that it's not all about interacting with her cool teacher and chatting online with her classmates: There's some hard work involved, too, and turning an idea into a written reality is just not always a pretty process.
After 3 solid months of quarantine, the YMCA opened back up for outdoor classes only starting in June, and K was able to step back into teaching her usual Saturday 9:30 class on the wood deck of the Hope Valley Y. After being limited to streaming our home PiYo to our loyal regulars via YouTube this spring, this is a welcome breath of (literal) fresh air for both D and K.
With all that was going on in June, it was fitting that we celebrated one more milestone at the end of the month. E and I both got our ears pierced on the last day of June!
E has been wanting to get hers pierced for a couple of years now. I don't remember when it first came up, but her interest really took off after her older taekwondo friend O got her ears pierced on her 12th birthday.
"O is several years older than you," I pointed out. "We can talk about it when you're older."
I had never pierced my own ears. I did ask, when I was about E's age, and my parents gave me a flat no. They told me it would turn me into a little vain peacock, and looking back I see that at that time they were right. When I grew older and asked again, my dad told me that I was free to choose for myself, but he wanted me to know that he felt earrings actually distracted from a woman's natural beauty, and he was not a fan. Um, OK, no earrings for me.
Interestingly, my dad has absolutely no memory of this conversation, nor of his orientation towards earrings at that time. He has no problem whatsoever with earrings. This paradigm shift is really not that surprising to me. My mother's ears were not pierced, and of course she defined his sense of beauty back then. Now he's older and more mellow—and no longer caught up in the minutiae that necessarily comes with the territory of raising a daughter—and has let go of the little things. He happily buys his bride pearl drops to dangle in her ears without a second thought.
Actually, as a martial artist, I had my own problem with the idea of ear piercing. If I were ever in a real fight and my assailant wore earrings (or piercings of any kind), I would see them as potential targets. I leave you to imagine the uncomfortable details, but suffice it to say that this idea is in keeping with the squeamish horror I felt, when I was much younger, upon seeing more than one mom of young kids with ripped ears. The cause: little hands grabbing mama's earring and yanking. (This made my young self grateful for my own intact ear lobes... and also not at all sure I ever wanted kids.)
But let's be real: what are the odds of ending up in a dark alley with someone who knows that earrings make a good target? If your life choices are good ones, then it's quite an unlikely scenario.
So I did what any good mom does when her daughter shows some real interest in something: I researched it.
When you think of a little girl getting her ears pierced these days, what naturally comes to mind is Claire's. The posters of smiling youngsters sporting trendy jewelry are all over the store windows, along with Free Ear Piercing in bold type. Purchase an earring starter kit, and the piercing is thrown in for free. You can even upgrade to their deluxe kit, which comes with an after-care treatment that lets you change your earrings in only 3 weeks, instead of the usual 6! What's not to love?
But I started wondering. How exactly is this piercing done? And who is doing it? Do I really want some young thing who looks barely old enough to drive, let alone drink, making permanent changes to my daughter's body? What other factors are there that I haven't even thought of yet?
A lot, actually. Once I looked into it, I discovered the enormity of the whole anti-gun war, and I'm not talking about debating the 2nd Amendment. Basically, piercing guns are controversial, at best. They are easy—it doesn't take a whole lot of training to enable those young teens at Claire's to ready, aim, fire—and they have improved a lot in terms of safety and sanitation. But those guns have some hair on them, and the biggest issue is the way they operate: They shoot a blunt object with tremendous pressure through the soft tissue of the earlobe, forcing the tissue to somehow make room. (Note that they can only be used on soft tissue; you simply cannot ask cartilage to politely move aside while you shove a post through it.)
This is very traumatic to the body. Yes, there are hundreds of thousands of little girls who endure this slightly terrifying but mercifully brief procedure and go home to a happily-ever-after relationship with their sparkling new jewelry. There are also a lot of horror stories of healing gone awry, although you have to dig them up. (I didn't. My imagination is working just fine.)
There's also the issue with the type of earring used. Most earrings use the butterfly-back closure, and this is what the gun shoots up the post at the back of the ear to secure your new earring. This means a number of things. A) The obvious: you have a post sticking out the back of the ear, and while the end is not needle-sharp, it is ready to poke your neck at the slightest pressure. (I didn't realize just how much of a problem this would be until we did pierce E's ears and I discovered how tiny her earlobe is. There's just no room back there for a post to stick out without sticking into her.) B) The butterfly-style back is strung up on the post like a bead, and it rests against the ear. It could easily come off, although it probably won't, but to keep your earring on securely it must fit snugly, and therefore offers very little room for the natural swelling that occurs around any puncture wound. You need the wound to breathe, which means you need the earring to allow for expansion and compression. And C), the butterfly back has a complex, curved surface that traps dirt and bacteria, increasing the likelihood of infection after piercing.
And then there's the fact that a location is only as sanitary as its least sanitary component, which means that it doesn't matter that the parts of the gun that will touch the ear are now single-use disposable parts, utilizing pre-sterilized, packaged and sealed earrings. If you're reaching for a ball-point pen to mark the dot on the my daughter's ear that you're going to aim for (Yes, I have watched this happen. And just how easy is it to really aim correctly with that gun? I'm wondering)—that same pen that 18 people have touched and 137 people have breathed on since the mall opened this morning—then this procedure is actually not sanitary. At all.
So what does that leave? Are there high end jewelry stores that do piercing with any more know-how than mall stores like Claire's and Justice? Not really. The pediatrician? Supposedly there are some that do piercing, although ours certainly doesn't, but they use guns. What that leaves, folks, is the piercing parlors, which are almost always found inside tattoo shops. (Yay.)
But there's a good reason for that. What a reputable piercing artist knows, is that needles are your friends. A piercing needle is very sharp, which means it makes a clean cut. It is also hollow, which means that instead of forcing tissue to figure out on its own how to get out of the way of this new object coming through the ear, it actually carves out a tiny amount of flesh as it passes through. In case that makes my reader squeamish, may I remind you that the goal is to put a hole in your ear, after all—a very small hole, a hole that is only just large enough for the shaft of an earring.
And reputable tattoo and piercing shops are very clean. They work on themselves (and their fellow employees) so they have a vested interest in doing it right. They know the proper equipment, and they know how to properly deal with the equipment.
But where do we even start in order to find a reputable tattoo shop???
Fortunately, I have friends. I asked one fellow Taekwondo mom if her daughter's ears are pierced, and she relayed the humorous story that started with the daughter and a friend wanting to both pierce their ears in honor of the friend's 16th birthday, and ended with the friend chickening out at the last minute. That was the end of the interest in earrings. However, because of this, both moms had done their research, and my TKD friend could give me the name of the place they had gone to (not) transact.
Turns out that Blue Flame in Wake Forest won't do anyone under 12, and for kids' piercings they recommended Rikki at Hilsborough St. Tattoo & Body Piercing in Raleigh. I texted back and forth with Rikki and was satisfied that this particular parlor was themed with anime and gaming decor and was not likely to be rated "adult." Accordingly, I made an appointment for a consultation.
The appointment happened to be on the 30th of June, while D was still in transition before starting the new job. He agreed to come, since he was available, and pointed out that this was our chance to do the deed while he could be with us, if we so desired.
I had already long been contemplating the idea of joining E in this venture, as a fun mother-daughter experience moving forward into a new phase of life together. We could share earrings just like we will one day (not too far from now) share shoes.
After the initial "let's discuss earrings when you're older" conversation E had once had with me, and the "why are we already talking about this?" interaction she had had with her daddy, we had all eventually come to an agreement: E would show us that she was responsible enough for us to consider letting her make a permanent change to her body when she took ownership of her taekwondo. This was supposed to mean putting in the hard work to pass the testing for Yellow Belt, and then continuing to be diligent about working her way towards orange. The result of this agreement was that E now had a clear goal, and she took charge.
She passed pre-testing for Yellow the first week of March, but then the weekend she was supposed to test, she was crushed to find that the whole state suddenly went on lock-down because of COVID19.
But after a few foot-loose and fancy-free weeks of quarantine, she realized that she had to practice her TKD or she would lose her skills—and would no longer be able to test once they reopen the school. She began practicing daily, and she has kept it up faithfully, even if it's only a few minutes here and there. She has stuck with it even when she doesn't feel like it, which is half the value of the TKD journey towards black belt, in my opinion.
She is nearly double digits, with the big 1-0 birthday coming up, and if things had gone as originally planned, she would be halfway to Orange by now. As far as we are concerned, she has fulfilled her part of the bargain.
To celebrate D's new job and the move forward into a new epoch of our lives, D and I had been taking the kids out to dinner one by one for some two-on-one bonding time. When it was E's turn, we told her we were ready to reward her faithfulness by letting her go ahead and get her ears pierced if she'd like, and that I was planning to do it with her. She lit up with excitement for two beautiful seconds, and then she got herself under control. It was like she was trying to figure out how a mature preteen ought to respond to such a weight of responsibility. We spent a large portion of that dinner encouraging her not to talk herself out of it. It wasn't that she didn't want it. Nor did she seem to dread the anticipated pain. (She very matter of factly stated, "There are needles involved. OF COURSE it's going to hurt.") She just didn't really know how to freely accept this long-awaited decision and move forward into the rite of passage.
That was a Friday. By the time Tuesday rolled around, she was quietly pumped. D, on the other hand, had cold feet. He's been processing a lot of change lately, and he suddenly realized he just wasn't sure he wanted his wife to alter her beautiful ears, which he liked just as they were, thank you. I had a talk with E, we shed a couple of tears over the wrench in our plans, and then and we all agreed to simply go to the consultation and trust our Daddy's judgment. If he felt the timing was right, we would do it, and if not, we would patiently wait until he felt it was. It was a hard decision, but creative.
When it actually came time to walk out the door, E told us she had two of her little "kimochi" friends in her purse: Friendly and Optimistic. It was the sunny way she put her little nose in the air when she said Optimistic—we burst out laughing. That's the spirit, girlfriend! Let's see what this day brings!
Well, it brought earrings. After Rikki gave us the tour—the piercing room, which included an explanation of some of the implements (the scarier-looking of which do not actually touch one's ears); the little back room where they wash the dirty items, bag and tag them and then put them in an autoclave to sanitize them with high pressure; and a thorough explanation of exactly how the procedure works from start to finish—D was convinced that this was the right place to get pierced, and that Rikki was the one to do the job.
Masks stayed on the whole time. (It's a new world, people, with an entirely new landscape.) This gave me pause, at first. Was Rikki really going to be able to determine the right place to put the holes if she couldn't even see our full faces? Was she truly comfortable operating within the bounds of this handicap? But the more we discussed everything, the more convinced I was that she knows what she's doing, and this was not her first Masked Rodeo. My gut said I could trust the artist at her work.
We had the fun of picking out our earrings (with D's invaluable input), signed some electronic forms, and the party got started.
Rikki was amazing. She really is a true artist, and you can see she cares about doing things right. E took up my offer to forge ahead where no Mo has gone before, so she was the first to sit in the chair. Masks stayed on all around, but Rikki pulled the loops away from the ears a few times to make sure she was seeing the ear at its natural state.
Rikki had gotten the instrument tray mostly prepped while we did paperwork. Now she opened all the sanitized metal parts and set them out on the disposable medical cloth. She set the needles down with their sharp ends resting in some kind of clear, body-compatible, sanitary goop that helps the needle slide through more cleanly. Next step was to clean E's earlobe with an alcohol wipe.
She then used Gentian Violet to mark the tiny dot where she planned to put the hole. I've used GV myself; it's naturally antibacterial and antifungal, and makes a heck of a mess if you spill it. (Her piercing room was wisely painted a lavender color, which harmonized with the dark splashes of GV on the wall!) Interestingly, you can scrub the dot off with an alcohol wipe—which Rikki did two or three times during the process of making sure the dot on E's left ear matched up to her satisfaction with the perfectly placed one on the right side—but then that finalized dot stubbornly stays put during the next step, which is to sanitize the entire earlobe with a swab dipped in orangey brown iodine. (We have some little orange spots on our masks as a souvenir of our day.)
Rikki then told E she wanted her to put her hands in her lap (no grabbing onto Rikki during the piercing!!), relax her shoulders down away from her ears, and look straight ahead. Deep breath in, let it all out. Second deep breath in—and the first piercing is done, you did amazing, good job!!
The needle used exactly matches the chosen gauge of the earring, so the hole is exactly the size needed and no bigger. 16 gauge is typical, but both E and I have very small lobes, so Rikki used 18 gauge (the higher the number, the smaller the needle) on us both. Once the needle is through, a pin is attached to the back end of the needle (on the front side of the ear), and Rikki tells you that you will feel the "first of two small pinches" as she pulls the pin through from front to back. Pin is inserted, needle is removed. Then the shaft of the earring is attached to the pin behind the ear, and you feel the second pinch as the earring is pulled through the hole from back to front. Because everything is the same gauge and fully connected at each step, the hole is never actually exposed to air, which means no airborne pathogens and a reduced chance of infection.
The earring itself is made of implant-grade titanium. No one reacts to titanium, ever, to my knowledge; this is why the high-end piercing establishments use it. The shaft is smooth with no external threading that could damage the new hole, and Rikki slides the pretty little jewel of choice (tiny silver stars, in E's case) into the shaft from the front until it clicks securely into place. The 6mm length allows for a normal amount of swelling (I believe they may have used a slightly shorter shaft on E, as she is still pretty small), and each part of the earring that touches the ear is very smooth and flat, so there's no skin-poking or bacteria-trapping. It's quality jewelry.
After-care is pretty simple... Don't touch the ears! No twisting necessary, the earring will not bond to the ear, so just keep hands off. We each went home with a can of saline rinse (it's just the NeilMed wound wash). Twice a we day rinse the ears with the saline wash, use a q-tip or paper towel to gently wipe around the earring, and dry carefully with a cool hair dryer. Moisture is the biggest impediment to healing, so we want things as dry as possible. After two weeks there is a nice layer of skin built up, and that point we can swim if we want, and just make sure we rinse the ears afterwards.
Full healing takes three months. (I don't know what Claire's is smoking with their 3 weeks thing, but I can guarantee you that they have certified piercing artists everywhere shuddering in horror.) At the end of three months, your body has fully adjusted to this new implant, and you can safely remove the earrings without risk of damaging your ears in any way. You can now have the fun of switching up your look; however, you need to wear earrings all the time for at least six months to ensure that the holes don't try to close up.
For us, this means patiently waiting until September 30. For now, we can "window shop" for earrings! Rikki told us to choose titanium, gold, or stainless steel to minimize the risk of allergic reaction. She advised us to stay away from sterling silver, as that is an amalgam of a bunch of different metals and often causes topical irritation.
I had already been intrigued by the styles I see over at Comfy Earrings. No butterfly closures here; these have a flat back that screws onto the shaft of the earring. They look a lot like what we are currently wearing, only the design is reversed: The earring goes through from the front and then closes at the back. They are externally threaded, so not a good choice for new piercings, but will be fine once our three months are up.
Sadly, they don't seem to have any elephants. We definitely need elephant earrings! 🐘
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| Appian Swag! |
After 3 solid months of quarantine, the YMCA opened back up for outdoor classes only starting in June, and K was able to step back into teaching her usual Saturday 9:30 class on the wood deck of the Hope Valley Y. After being limited to streaming our home PiYo to our loyal regulars via YouTube this spring, this is a welcome breath of (literal) fresh air for both D and K.
With all that was going on in June, it was fitting that we celebrated one more milestone at the end of the month. E and I both got our ears pierced on the last day of June!
E has been wanting to get hers pierced for a couple of years now. I don't remember when it first came up, but her interest really took off after her older taekwondo friend O got her ears pierced on her 12th birthday.
"O is several years older than you," I pointed out. "We can talk about it when you're older."
I had never pierced my own ears. I did ask, when I was about E's age, and my parents gave me a flat no. They told me it would turn me into a little vain peacock, and looking back I see that at that time they were right. When I grew older and asked again, my dad told me that I was free to choose for myself, but he wanted me to know that he felt earrings actually distracted from a woman's natural beauty, and he was not a fan. Um, OK, no earrings for me.
Interestingly, my dad has absolutely no memory of this conversation, nor of his orientation towards earrings at that time. He has no problem whatsoever with earrings. This paradigm shift is really not that surprising to me. My mother's ears were not pierced, and of course she defined his sense of beauty back then. Now he's older and more mellow—and no longer caught up in the minutiae that necessarily comes with the territory of raising a daughter—and has let go of the little things. He happily buys his bride pearl drops to dangle in her ears without a second thought.
Actually, as a martial artist, I had my own problem with the idea of ear piercing. If I were ever in a real fight and my assailant wore earrings (or piercings of any kind), I would see them as potential targets. I leave you to imagine the uncomfortable details, but suffice it to say that this idea is in keeping with the squeamish horror I felt, when I was much younger, upon seeing more than one mom of young kids with ripped ears. The cause: little hands grabbing mama's earring and yanking. (This made my young self grateful for my own intact ear lobes... and also not at all sure I ever wanted kids.)
But let's be real: what are the odds of ending up in a dark alley with someone who knows that earrings make a good target? If your life choices are good ones, then it's quite an unlikely scenario.
So I did what any good mom does when her daughter shows some real interest in something: I researched it.
When you think of a little girl getting her ears pierced these days, what naturally comes to mind is Claire's. The posters of smiling youngsters sporting trendy jewelry are all over the store windows, along with Free Ear Piercing in bold type. Purchase an earring starter kit, and the piercing is thrown in for free. You can even upgrade to their deluxe kit, which comes with an after-care treatment that lets you change your earrings in only 3 weeks, instead of the usual 6! What's not to love?
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| Their marketing is excellent, right? |
But I started wondering. How exactly is this piercing done? And who is doing it? Do I really want some young thing who looks barely old enough to drive, let alone drink, making permanent changes to my daughter's body? What other factors are there that I haven't even thought of yet?
A lot, actually. Once I looked into it, I discovered the enormity of the whole anti-gun war, and I'm not talking about debating the 2nd Amendment. Basically, piercing guns are controversial, at best. They are easy—it doesn't take a whole lot of training to enable those young teens at Claire's to ready, aim, fire—and they have improved a lot in terms of safety and sanitation. But those guns have some hair on them, and the biggest issue is the way they operate: They shoot a blunt object with tremendous pressure through the soft tissue of the earlobe, forcing the tissue to somehow make room. (Note that they can only be used on soft tissue; you simply cannot ask cartilage to politely move aside while you shove a post through it.)
This is very traumatic to the body. Yes, there are hundreds of thousands of little girls who endure this slightly terrifying but mercifully brief procedure and go home to a happily-ever-after relationship with their sparkling new jewelry. There are also a lot of horror stories of healing gone awry, although you have to dig them up. (I didn't. My imagination is working just fine.)
There's also the issue with the type of earring used. Most earrings use the butterfly-back closure, and this is what the gun shoots up the post at the back of the ear to secure your new earring. This means a number of things. A) The obvious: you have a post sticking out the back of the ear, and while the end is not needle-sharp, it is ready to poke your neck at the slightest pressure. (I didn't realize just how much of a problem this would be until we did pierce E's ears and I discovered how tiny her earlobe is. There's just no room back there for a post to stick out without sticking into her.) B) The butterfly-style back is strung up on the post like a bead, and it rests against the ear. It could easily come off, although it probably won't, but to keep your earring on securely it must fit snugly, and therefore offers very little room for the natural swelling that occurs around any puncture wound. You need the wound to breathe, which means you need the earring to allow for expansion and compression. And C), the butterfly back has a complex, curved surface that traps dirt and bacteria, increasing the likelihood of infection after piercing.
And then there's the fact that a location is only as sanitary as its least sanitary component, which means that it doesn't matter that the parts of the gun that will touch the ear are now single-use disposable parts, utilizing pre-sterilized, packaged and sealed earrings. If you're reaching for a ball-point pen to mark the dot on the my daughter's ear that you're going to aim for (Yes, I have watched this happen. And just how easy is it to really aim correctly with that gun? I'm wondering)—that same pen that 18 people have touched and 137 people have breathed on since the mall opened this morning—then this procedure is actually not sanitary. At all.
Claire's is officially out.
So what does that leave? Are there high end jewelry stores that do piercing with any more know-how than mall stores like Claire's and Justice? Not really. The pediatrician? Supposedly there are some that do piercing, although ours certainly doesn't, but they use guns. What that leaves, folks, is the piercing parlors, which are almost always found inside tattoo shops. (Yay.)
But there's a good reason for that. What a reputable piercing artist knows, is that needles are your friends. A piercing needle is very sharp, which means it makes a clean cut. It is also hollow, which means that instead of forcing tissue to figure out on its own how to get out of the way of this new object coming through the ear, it actually carves out a tiny amount of flesh as it passes through. In case that makes my reader squeamish, may I remind you that the goal is to put a hole in your ear, after all—a very small hole, a hole that is only just large enough for the shaft of an earring.
And reputable tattoo and piercing shops are very clean. They work on themselves (and their fellow employees) so they have a vested interest in doing it right. They know the proper equipment, and they know how to properly deal with the equipment.
But where do we even start in order to find a reputable tattoo shop???
 |
| Little lady growing up! |
Turns out that Blue Flame in Wake Forest won't do anyone under 12, and for kids' piercings they recommended Rikki at Hilsborough St. Tattoo & Body Piercing in Raleigh. I texted back and forth with Rikki and was satisfied that this particular parlor was themed with anime and gaming decor and was not likely to be rated "adult." Accordingly, I made an appointment for a consultation.
The appointment happened to be on the 30th of June, while D was still in transition before starting the new job. He agreed to come, since he was available, and pointed out that this was our chance to do the deed while he could be with us, if we so desired.
I had already long been contemplating the idea of joining E in this venture, as a fun mother-daughter experience moving forward into a new phase of life together. We could share earrings just like we will one day (not too far from now) share shoes.
After the initial "let's discuss earrings when you're older" conversation E had once had with me, and the "why are we already talking about this?" interaction she had had with her daddy, we had all eventually come to an agreement: E would show us that she was responsible enough for us to consider letting her make a permanent change to her body when she took ownership of her taekwondo. This was supposed to mean putting in the hard work to pass the testing for Yellow Belt, and then continuing to be diligent about working her way towards orange. The result of this agreement was that E now had a clear goal, and she took charge.
She passed pre-testing for Yellow the first week of March, but then the weekend she was supposed to test, she was crushed to find that the whole state suddenly went on lock-down because of COVID19.
But after a few foot-loose and fancy-free weeks of quarantine, she realized that she had to practice her TKD or she would lose her skills—and would no longer be able to test once they reopen the school. She began practicing daily, and she has kept it up faithfully, even if it's only a few minutes here and there. She has stuck with it even when she doesn't feel like it, which is half the value of the TKD journey towards black belt, in my opinion.
She is nearly double digits, with the big 1-0 birthday coming up, and if things had gone as originally planned, she would be halfway to Orange by now. As far as we are concerned, she has fulfilled her part of the bargain.
That was a Friday. By the time Tuesday rolled around, she was quietly pumped. D, on the other hand, had cold feet. He's been processing a lot of change lately, and he suddenly realized he just wasn't sure he wanted his wife to alter her beautiful ears, which he liked just as they were, thank you. I had a talk with E, we shed a couple of tears over the wrench in our plans, and then and we all agreed to simply go to the consultation and trust our Daddy's judgment. If he felt the timing was right, we would do it, and if not, we would patiently wait until he felt it was. It was a hard decision, but creative.
 |
| Optimistic |
Well, it brought earrings. After Rikki gave us the tour—the piercing room, which included an explanation of some of the implements (the scarier-looking of which do not actually touch one's ears); the little back room where they wash the dirty items, bag and tag them and then put them in an autoclave to sanitize them with high pressure; and a thorough explanation of exactly how the procedure works from start to finish—D was convinced that this was the right place to get pierced, and that Rikki was the one to do the job.
Masks stayed on the whole time. (It's a new world, people, with an entirely new landscape.) This gave me pause, at first. Was Rikki really going to be able to determine the right place to put the holes if she couldn't even see our full faces? Was she truly comfortable operating within the bounds of this handicap? But the more we discussed everything, the more convinced I was that she knows what she's doing, and this was not her first Masked Rodeo. My gut said I could trust the artist at her work.
Rikki was amazing. She really is a true artist, and you can see she cares about doing things right. E took up my offer to forge ahead where no Mo has gone before, so she was the first to sit in the chair. Masks stayed on all around, but Rikki pulled the loops away from the ears a few times to make sure she was seeing the ear at its natural state.
Rikki had gotten the instrument tray mostly prepped while we did paperwork. Now she opened all the sanitized metal parts and set them out on the disposable medical cloth. She set the needles down with their sharp ends resting in some kind of clear, body-compatible, sanitary goop that helps the needle slide through more cleanly. Next step was to clean E's earlobe with an alcohol wipe.
She then used Gentian Violet to mark the tiny dot where she planned to put the hole. I've used GV myself; it's naturally antibacterial and antifungal, and makes a heck of a mess if you spill it. (Her piercing room was wisely painted a lavender color, which harmonized with the dark splashes of GV on the wall!) Interestingly, you can scrub the dot off with an alcohol wipe—which Rikki did two or three times during the process of making sure the dot on E's left ear matched up to her satisfaction with the perfectly placed one on the right side—but then that finalized dot stubbornly stays put during the next step, which is to sanitize the entire earlobe with a swab dipped in orangey brown iodine. (We have some little orange spots on our masks as a souvenir of our day.)Rikki then told E she wanted her to put her hands in her lap (no grabbing onto Rikki during the piercing!!), relax her shoulders down away from her ears, and look straight ahead. Deep breath in, let it all out. Second deep breath in—and the first piercing is done, you did amazing, good job!!
The needle used exactly matches the chosen gauge of the earring, so the hole is exactly the size needed and no bigger. 16 gauge is typical, but both E and I have very small lobes, so Rikki used 18 gauge (the higher the number, the smaller the needle) on us both. Once the needle is through, a pin is attached to the back end of the needle (on the front side of the ear), and Rikki tells you that you will feel the "first of two small pinches" as she pulls the pin through from front to back. Pin is inserted, needle is removed. Then the shaft of the earring is attached to the pin behind the ear, and you feel the second pinch as the earring is pulled through the hole from back to front. Because everything is the same gauge and fully connected at each step, the hole is never actually exposed to air, which means no airborne pathogens and a reduced chance of infection.
The earring itself is made of implant-grade titanium. No one reacts to titanium, ever, to my knowledge; this is why the high-end piercing establishments use it. The shaft is smooth with no external threading that could damage the new hole, and Rikki slides the pretty little jewel of choice (tiny silver stars, in E's case) into the shaft from the front until it clicks securely into place. The 6mm length allows for a normal amount of swelling (I believe they may have used a slightly shorter shaft on E, as she is still pretty small), and each part of the earring that touches the ear is very smooth and flat, so there's no skin-poking or bacteria-trapping. It's quality jewelry.
After-care is pretty simple... Don't touch the ears! No twisting necessary, the earring will not bond to the ear, so just keep hands off. We each went home with a can of saline rinse (it's just the NeilMed wound wash). Twice a we day rinse the ears with the saline wash, use a q-tip or paper towel to gently wipe around the earring, and dry carefully with a cool hair dryer. Moisture is the biggest impediment to healing, so we want things as dry as possible. After two weeks there is a nice layer of skin built up, and that point we can swim if we want, and just make sure we rinse the ears afterwards.Full healing takes three months. (I don't know what Claire's is smoking with their 3 weeks thing, but I can guarantee you that they have certified piercing artists everywhere shuddering in horror.) At the end of three months, your body has fully adjusted to this new implant, and you can safely remove the earrings without risk of damaging your ears in any way. You can now have the fun of switching up your look; however, you need to wear earrings all the time for at least six months to ensure that the holes don't try to close up.
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| Mo went with swirly "black" opals that shimmer with multi-colored fire |
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| And thus begins her happily ever after... with winking, twinkling little fairy stars. |
I had already been intrigued by the styles I see over at Comfy Earrings. No butterfly closures here; these have a flat back that screws onto the shaft of the earring. They look a lot like what we are currently wearing, only the design is reversed: The earring goes through from the front and then closes at the back. They are externally threaded, so not a good choice for new piercings, but will be fine once our three months are up.
Sadly, they don't seem to have any elephants. We definitely need elephant earrings! 🐘
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