Her thin shoulder hitches upward. “I wish my Jimmy would find a decent woman such as yourself. All he seems to want to bring home to meet me are rough ones, if you know what I mean.” She scrunches her nose and then readjusts her glasses. Then moves to adjust her earrings that are as perfectly fine as her glasses were. When she completes her accessory circuit, she catches herself from starting over and picks up the stress ball I gave her to help redirect her focus away from the impulses.

I unbutton the left cuff of my blouse and roll the sleeve up to my elbow. It’s a rule of mine to not share much of my personal life with my patients, but Sylvia needs to get over her hang-up about maintaining a proper appearance if we’re ever going to make any progress. Shoot, she won’t even take the silly ball home with her for fear someone will see her with it and think poorly of her.

I lay my arm on my desk to display the scar from long ago and the tattoo lining it. “Does this tattoo give you a different impression of me?”

Sylvia frowns. “Well, I wasn’t expecting that on you . . .”

“May I tell you the meaning behind it?”

“I suppose.”

“A dear friend of mine was a Holocaust survivor. She wasn’t given a choice when they tattooed her identity number on her skin in about the same spot as mine.” I traced the inked symbols, each no bigger than my thumbnail, with my fingertip. “This is in honor of her. Each symbol stands for something very personal to me.”

I touch the dainty white flower, where the story begins. “The honeysuckle bloom is in memory of my mother, who died when I was only thirteen. I cannot smell the sweet aroma of honeysuckle without hearing her laughter.” Being mindful of not getting carried away in the first part of my story, I move to the red outline of a heart, where the right side doesn’t close completely. “The open heart is a reminder to keep my heart open to possibilities and to love others openly. To not ever hide my love.” I trace the sky-blue cross next to the heart. “The cross symbol is where I find my hope in this life of chaos. It’s the center symbol to remind me to keep God centered in my life. First and foremost.”