Ta-da! After 10 days of healing my 40th b-day tattoo is ready for its online reveal.

Pink and blue for Audrey and Owen, it’s my own take on the balance of opposites symbolized by the yin-yang design. It also evokes my goal with this blog: by being vocal and visible about my family’s dual last names, perhaps matrilineal choices will achieve parity with patrilineal.

It was the key element of an Asian theme that wove through the event of turning 40. I also received several garden accessories to further the Japanese design I’m trying to achieve in our yard. Knowing that certain numbers are significant in Asian culture, I Googled “40″ to see if I could find any insight to the decade ahead of me.

The search yielded nothing in terms of Asian associations, but did turn up multiple hits of how significant 40 is in the Bible (which I should have remembered…more evident of just how lapsed a Catholic I’ve become.)  Here’s one summary of the stories where 40 plays a significant role, and an explanation of the overarching significance of the number:

“A 40-something time period, whether days, months, or years is ALWAYS a period of testing, trial, probation, or chastisement (but not judgment) and ends with a period of restoration, revival or renewal.”

Especially after my personally tumultuous 30s (met and married husband, had two kids, switched jobs and careers, saw my father diagnosed with and die from cancer) I’m ready for renewal. I’m looking for new directions in my writing life, too.

And if this blog gains more traction, just maybe matrilineal choices will also be revived in the 2010s.

Sundays always create a bit of matrilineal depression around here. It’s my habit to read the birth announcements in the Sunday paper, and it’s so hard not to be disheartened by how rarely babies are given their mothers’ names. The only time I see a matrilineal name is when there isn’t a father listed at all.

This past Sunday’s weekly dose of discouragement was compounded by the arrival of my alumni magazine from Marquette University. Not only were 37 out of 37 children listed in the birth announcements bearing their fathers’ names, but 36 of 37 mothers were bearing their husbands’ names. It is a Catholic university, but come on! More than 40 years post-feminism, it’s incredible that 97 percent of a group of women who have benefitted from its influence (remember these are all younger women of child-bearing age) still choose to trade in the most singular element of their identity when they say “I do?”

Add to that the birthday cards I’d received in the past week from people who either deliberately or ignorantly address them to “Cari Henderson” and I was feeling pretty gloomy.

Late in the day, though, I heard a story about a couple where the husband took the wife’s name. A ray of hope pierced the gloom. I also finally got around to submitting Audrey’s birth to the alumni magazine, along with a sentence about this blog.

I don’t know if they’ll publish that part. I noticed, however, that the lone mother who kept her own name has given it to her three kids as their middle name, as we did with Owen. She’s ripe for a matrilineal choice for the next one. Maybe I can provide the push. And so I keep posting.

You see what you want/

It’s natural that is so/

Belief, though? Don’t know.

Received a video the other day of a family member’s three-month-old daughter listening to her mother play the piano for the first time. There were several footnotes explaining what to watch for, supposedly supporting evidence of the baby’s engagement with the music. I watched it; to me her toe-tapping, rhythm keeping, etc.  looked like any infant’s random kicks, waves and head bobbing.

If that’s what her family of musicians sees, though, that’s fine. And if seeing is believing, maybe she’s got her start as the next generation. In other words, if they believe there’s a budding Janis Joplin or Billie Holiday in the house,  and treat her that way, perhaps it will indeed come true.

But what happens if there’s nothing visible on which to ground your belief? I’m thinking a lot about this as I prepare for a change in my writing life. I’ll soon have far fewer regular published bylines, a decision I made due to time constraints and also a desire to shift into other kinds of writing for which I don’t yet have a market.

Hopefully the pieces - including these blog posts - will be richer and more personally rewarding.  But I have a hard time believing I’m a writer if  I don’t see “By Cari Noga” at frequent enough intervals. Is that a trap laid by my ego? A self-fulfilling prophecy or one that’s kept me on a treadmill? My 40s decade looms blankly. Perhaps I’ll learn to believe without seeing.