We had two TVs when I was growing up: one in our den and one in our parents' bedroom. On Sunday nights, we kids fought over who got the bed and who got the chair to watch Mannix, a detective series that ran from 1967 to 1975. Dad doled out bowls of popcorn drenched in melted margarine and salt.
 
Joe Mannix, the series' protagonist, was a little old for me to swoon over but I did like his convertibles and the kind way he treated his secretary and even his cadre of enemies. And the show seemed so modern, fleshing out the decades' themes of racism, returning Vietnam vets, addiction and other emotional and physical disabilities. The Heroes & Icons TV network airs the series now and it looks even more modern.
 
Heroes. Icons.  
 

A new tattoo parlor opened in our neighborhood geared toward suburban moms. Though I'm a city mom, its guaranteed cleanliness appeals to me. 
 
But what to etch on my skin.  A word or a symbol. Something sexy or defiant or tender. 
 
I looked up the Chinese symbol for “I don't know.”   

Photo: At the Mechanic by Lora Keller

A taut steel spring slung between two leather straps. Transparent green knobby balls. A hard rubber kidney-shaped pillow.
 
These are the tools I use to keep my feet healthy with balance and stretching exercises. My hope is it will counteract my once youthful forays into spike heels and pointy-toed boots.      
 
Without this discipline, I fear their latticed bones will buckle and bulge under the earthquake of my aging steps. I've seen the tangled toes of a 90-year-old.
 
Purchase at Parkview Pilates in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin http://parkview-pilates.com/ or http://franklinmethod.com/products1/equipments
 

Forgiveness cascades from ancient religions, new age religions, Alcoholics Anonymous. I never got the hang of it. I like a good grudge.
 
Either my son or my mother or both schooled me in a new tactic. Just forget it.
 
If I held onto all the heartbreak of motherhood – the broken glass, the splintered plaster, the casual lies – he might be gone and I'd be in prison. Motherhood is immersion therapy into the art of forgetting.   
 
And then there are the unheralded glories of caring for a mother with dementia.
 
First she lost her way driving in her neighborhood. Then she regularly harangued bank clerks for their accounting errors. Now she's settled into folding pastel wash cloths on the memory care unit of a nursing home. She can't remember my name.
 
She's never been happier.