Orange

So, I got a new tattoo last Friday. And I promised that I’d explain it, so here’s the story.

We’re going back to Spain again this year to visit the same winery we visited in 2013. It was in that cellar during the tasting that I almost got into a shouting match with a dude about Agent Orange. I’m not even sure how it started, but at some point Vietnam came up. We’d just lost dad in the fall of 2012, so he’d not even been gone a year. And some joker from Stone Mountain Georgia who was (and probably still is) an RV salesman had just said something stupid about people being pilots because they got paid more.

I vaguely remember saying that, no, that wasn’t the case with Earl. My father’s service wasn’t just about making money. He wasn’t a one and done man — he was a lifer, and in more ways than anyone could have predicted at the time. He retired from the Army a Major. And like so many who served in Vietnam, he carried home the weapon that would kill him.

Agent Orange.

The dude in the cellar didn’t get the hint to shut up even after I said, “You didn’t know my father, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk about him, as we just lost him to Agent Orange-related lymphoma.” He then started ranting about how “oh, nobody knew it was bad back then.” To which I called bullshit. I’d been reading Wilcox’s books on Agent Orange — Waiting for an Army to Die and Scorched Earth. I had also spent hours reading about Agent Orange online in the months that dad was sick and then reading even harder after he was gone, looking for answers after an all-too-short-lived remission phase that had us fooled into thinking we might have more time before the poison balled up its fist for that final blow.

I was mad for weeks. I found his dealership in Georgia and I’m pretty sure I wrote him an email at some point in the months after we got home that I never sent.

I tell this story mainly because it illustrates how ignorant many of us are about Agent Orange; the level of silence when dad was first diagnosed was astounding. Thankfully, that’s changing as the VA has reluctantly begun to acknowledge the damage. There are groups that are addressing the damage, including COVVHA and VAVA and The War Legacies Project, and publications like The Nation and ProRepublica and The Independent are covering stories of the lingering effects in Vietnam and America. And while I am glad to see that there are so many new resources and stories available for those of us who go looking for them, I also feel like we need more discussion in the larger world.

After all, Trump’s VA is back-pedaling and we’re still waiting on Shulkin’s decision to potentially add more ailments related to exposure.

So, the tattoo — I started thinking about and looking for an appropriate image as my conversation starter. An orange ribbon tattoo didn’t appeal to me, nor did the idea of an orange rose or a biohazard symbol. I needed something more significant, something that could be beautiful while at the same time savage and a bit ugly when you look close enough.

I decided on a sort of double image. Think of how king, jack, and queen playing cards look. In this case, though, the two images are not mirrored. Instead the end toward my elbow is of four tree limbs, with leaf ash shading, and embers falling from the tips, falling toward my hand. The trunk of the tree is hidden — behind a fire Phoenix.

The Phoenix appealed to me for several reasons. For one, my father was the kind of man who constantly transformed his life; from his abusive childhood to a man who loved his children and his wife fiercely; from a stable boy to soldier, to farrier to horse trainer, to working on oil wells, to entrepreneur. He never backed away from a challenge.

The tree? Well, there are four limbs, which wasn’t really the plan when I gave the tattoo artist the sketch that I found closest to what I wanted and let him do his interpretation. The tree is both limbs and roots depending on which end of my arm you’re looking at, and even though I know I didn’t tell the artist that there were four of us left behind — mom, Deb, Renee, and I — I like to think that each branch is one of us.

The beautiful parts of the tattoo acknowledge my father’s versatility, his power to change, and the fact that without him, the family wouldn’t exist. The family tree is still there; each of those limbs is strong and holds their own, despite the damage.

We have established roots that spread wide.

There’s beauty in the Phoenix, too, of course. Not only does it represent mutability and change, but also nobility and peace. Like Yin-Yang, the Phoenix represents harmony. (In the research phase, I also looked up information on the Phoenix in Vietnamese culture, and you can read about that here). I didn’t ask the artist, but I suspect he may have looked up the Phoenix and may have learned that it one of four sacred animals. He did know there was a Vietnam connection and he does tend to do his own reading before rendering drawings, which I found out when he was doing my Ganesh tattoo last fall.

Finally, I also found out about the Phoenix Program which ran concurrently with the use of Agent Orange and Operation Ranch Hand and which was a coordinated effort to gather intelligence and develop anti-terrorist measures. Like many war-time efforts, the program has a controversial and incredibly ugly history; unfortunately it also is the basis for current anti-terrorist initiatives and those used under George W. Bush’s regime. Given the number of Black Sites that Trump is trying to reactivate, I’m sure that whatever the 2017 version of the Phoenix Program is that it’s thriving.

The placement and vibrancy are intentional. I have other tattoos and two of the three aren’t small, but they can be easily hidden by wearing pants and a t-shirt. This new one is harder to hide, as it’s on the inside of my left forearm. And, it’s the only tattoo I have that has color other than grey or black.

I want to talk about it. I’m not sure how yet, but my next act will in some way involve Agent Orange Awareness and advocacy for those still impacted.

Which, really, when you think about it, is all of us.