Good Morning, y’all.
I found this mug this morning. I’d forgotten I kept it. It’s a memory of my first tattoo. Here’s that story.
I’d always wanted a tattoo, but hearing the advice of others, I waited until I knew what I wanted. You are committing something in ink to your body permanently. It should mean something. It took even longer than my cousin who did get a tattoo after once telling me no tattoos because they’ll look awful when you are old and wrinkly. (Who cares?). But around my 27h birthday, while shopping with my friend Ericka, I figured out what I wanted.
I have long believed that a joyous life is the goal. Happiness, used frequently as the mark, is fleeting. You can be happy one hour and not the next hour. Joy, on the other hand, is life’s undercurrent that keeps you going. Even when you most despair, joy is what moves you forward. A symbol for joy.
Coincidently, my Stepmom (Can we get a better word for this person? Kathy has been in my life since I was four. I’m open to suggestions.) called me to inform me that for that year, when I was home in Chicago visiting family, my birthday present would be a tattoo. In fact, it would be a family trip for all to get tattooed.
So, around my 27th birthday, Kathy, my Dad, Kathy’s nephew Jim, his wife Jen, and I all hopped into Jim’s and Jen’s conversion Jen for the trip from the northwest suburbs of Chicago to Jade Dragon Tattoo. (My brother wanted to go desperately, but he was not yet 18 years old.). Kathy was getting her second tattoo, on her ankle, and that required her to be in a separate room to recline accordingly. Jim and Jen were getting tattoos – which number I couldn’t tell you, but far beyond Kathy’s second and my first. They, too, were in private back rooms given the location of the tattoos they were getting and/or the clothing they would have to remove in order to get those tattoos.
This left me in the front room with three open stations from which artists worked. I knew what I wanted to have tattooed, the artist confirmed that the art was correct. I proceeded to the middle station of the three where the young male artist began his work.
My Dad, on the other hand, wandered about “attempting” to decide on a tattoo. I suggested a Viking or a Norwegian something. He thought about a little scuba guy. Avid scuba divers when they first lived in Florida, it had been long since they had lived in Florida and been scuba diving. I pointed out that he was committing something in permanent ink to his body, and he hadn’t dived in years. My Dad took this to mean I didn’t approve and has forever used this as the reason he didn’t get a tattoo. Really, he just didn’t want to get one.
At the same time, the tattoo artist working on me and the other free artists were circled about talking about me. My clothing didn’t require me to remove everything – only to shift straps of my spaghetti strap tank and my bra – while my back was being tattooed. I was a cute 27-year-old, and we all chatted, of course, with the male artists asking me if I had other tattoos.
“No,” I replied.
“What? I don’t believe it. Surely you have a piercing?”
“Yes. I do.”
“Where?”
“I’ll tell you when my dad leaves the room.”
And so, it went, chatting about tattoos and piercings. And I’ll tell you this, as soon as the tattoo artist working on my back stared, I knew I’d be getting another tattoo. To all those people who say they will only get one: HA! That’s what we all say.
It’s a great memory – and one, even though my Dad blames me – I treasure. For its fun. For its wackiness (We drove from the suburbs to the city in a conversion van in the early aughts for family tattoos.). For the tattoos.
Now I have two tattoos, and I have plans for at least two more.
Mug: Jade Dragon Tattoo