Tattoos I Know: Paul's Taíno Ink

Last summer, my friend Paul had some new work done by Pierre at The Fort Apache Tattoo Studio near Penn Station. You can see some of his old work here and here and here and here (yes, he's a regular!).

Fort Apache is up several flights of stairs, but it is conveniently close to my day job, which makes up for the aerobic ascension to the shop on 31st Street.

This is what Paul had tattooed on his right forearm:

These four symbols are petroglyphs from the Taíno culture in Puerto Rico. They are one way Paul has chosen to acknowledging his and his ancestors' culture, in ink.

From top to bottom, the symbols each have literal meanings, and then personal meanings for Paul. The triangular piece is a zemis, pointing in three directions - to the sky and the Creator, to the underworld and the realm of the dead, and to the world of the living.

The second petroglyph is Sol, or the sun and the fourth design is the coqui, or frog.

Thanks once again to Paul for sharing his latest installment of ink here with us on Tattoosday!

Tattoos I Love: Melanie's Hybrid Flower

This is another special edition of Tattoosday, a variation on the Tattoos I Know series. First seen on Valentine's Day, this is an episode of Tattoos I Love.

This category is reserved for the ink on my wife, Melanie, who turns 40 today.

Several years ago, I bought her a gift certificate for Body Art Studios in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. The owner and artist, Peter Cavorsi, is a talented tattooer, and he proved it in this case.

Melanie's favorite flower is the iris. She wanted something pretty along those lines, and gave Peter a couple of samples of artwork as a reference.

What he came up with was a lovely interpretation of the iris, but with other floral elements thrown in. So, although based on her favorite flower, it is a hybrid that is uniquely hers:


I surreptitiously snapped this photo of the tattoo on her right ankle last year at a little league game in which our younger daughter was playing.

Work from Peter at Body Art Studios has appeared previously on Tattoosday here.

Happy Birthday, Melanie!

A Love Story

Last Saturday night, Melanie and I went into Manhattan for a small holiday gathering. We were going to see her old high school friend Vibeke at her mother's apartment on the Upper West Side. It had been quite some time since we had last seen Vibeke. We weren't sure, but our best guess was 1998.

Vibeke had been living in Los Angeles, had recently married and moved to Houston. It was great seeing her again, and it was nice meeting her husband Matt.

Invariably, Melanie asked Vibeke how she and Matt had met. She explained that, in the early '90s, she had been living on a boat in St. John, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. For a while, the only way she could get to shore from the boat where it was moored was to swim. I'm guessing she also occasionally hitched a ride on someone's dinghy, but her primary shore-to-ship mode of transport was her own arms and legs.

As one would imagine, this proved to be problematic. So she invested in an inflatable dinghy and a small outboard motor to more practically transport her to and from dry land.

When the motor developed a problem, she took it into a shop for repairs. A gentleman named Matt was the proprietor and he repaired it. A little tension developed when, as Vibeke tells it, the repairs were less than satisfactory. More work was done, apparently to her standards and from this initial meeting, a romance blossomed.

After six months, Vibeke decided, for various reasons, that she would return to the states and move on with her life. The relationship with Matt abruptly ended.

Cut to the cinematic technique of a calender shedding pages like a tree in autumn, as time passed.

Then 9/11 happened. This prompted many Americans to feel the need to check in with past acquaintances and such. Vibeke looked for Matt, but he has a common last name and she couldn't find him. She was having, and continued to have, "where is he now" moments. She never found him.

But he found her.

Earlier this year, she was proctoring a test for students at a public school in Southern California where she was teaching. The phone rang.

It was Matt. He was beside himself. He had found her. Vibeke was stunned, but she was otherwise occupied. She gave him her number and told him to call back.

He did. He lived in Houston, she was dating someone else. The next time he came to town she was single. They met. The rest, they say, is history. They were married in June and are now newlyweds in Texas.

"What a great story," Melanie and I collectively thought. We were very happy for her, and him.

Later that evening, Melanie and I were chatting with Matt near the kitchen.

Matt asked about Melanie's ankle tattoo. He seemed interested. I mentioned Tattoosday. "Want to see something?" he asked. He motioned us into the kitchen, away from the rest of the party guests.

"You've heard how Vibeke and I met, right?" he asked, touching a button on his shirt. We nodded. And he began to tell his story, similar to his wife's version, only he paused after speaking of her leaving the island way back in 1995.

The month after she departed, still devastated from the abrupt end to their relationship, he returned to his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

And there, he told us, unbuttoning his shirt and revealing his left shoulder, he went to Route 66 Fine Line Tattoo and got this:


See, dear readers, there was a relevant point to this story.

And Matt pointed out in this subtle aquatic tattoo, the marks of his true love. Here in the undulating leaves is a V for Vibeke, a C for her middle name, and an H (at the top of the piece) for her maiden name.

Woven into his tattoo of lost love and despair were the initials of the woman he loved. And he had no idea where she was.

But the years passed for Matt, as they did for Vibeke, and this ink in his flesh was an anchor reminding him of his love. And when people asked him about it, he explained it was just an aquatic-themed piece, an homage to his love of the ocean.

And fourteen years later they reunited and picked up where they had left off in 1995. Now married to the woman whose initials were subtly inked into his flesh, the tattoo has changed.

When fresh, the piece was a memento of loss, the missed moment of the road not taken, a reminder of a relationship that ended too soon.

Over the years, the tattoo meant hope that some day, the two would cross paths again. It was a daily reminder of what was lost, and what Matt hoped to regain.

Seemingly miraculously the two souls were reunited, and the tattoo, in its simple black and gray tones, represents perseverance and success. The ink may have faded in the sun, but the love only became more clear.

Matt and Vibeke's story is quite remarkable, and the time they were apart has faded. Togetherness always defeats the pain of separation.

I want to thank Matt and Vibeke for sharing their tale with us here on Tattoosday. It's not every day that we get to hear a full-blown love story on this site, and the fact that Matt's tattoo is at the center of it makes it even more wonderful.

Tattoos I Know: Paul, Part 4, or, The Great Cover-Up of 2008, continued...

Late last December, we posted about our friend Paul getting some cover-up work done on his upper right arm. Revisit the report here.

We recently checked in with Paul to see how things were going, and he updated us with the latest efforts by Horisei, who is about a session away from finishing this beautiful work:




Horisei tattoos out of the Chelsea Tattoo Company, formerly the home of Rising Dragon.

Thanks again to Paul for sharing. I'm guessing we'll see the finished product some time in 2010!

Re-Post: Tattoos I Know - The Grim Reaper

Today is a sad anniversary for us here on Tattoosday, for it marks one year since our friend, Tom Wacker, passed away unexpectedly.

Tom was an early supporter of the blog, from its fledgling days as a once-a-week feature over on BillyBlog, and he watched us grow with a mixture of excitement and pride.

The camera I use was a birthday gift from Tom and his fiancee Sephora, and he was always first in line to see the pictures I took whenever I had new material for the blog.

A week or two before his death, Tom was hanging out at a friend's house in New Jersey. He took pictures of his friend's sleeve and e-mailed them to me. The photos are still in my mailbox, unposted. I still haven't the heart to call his friend and talk tattoo with him.

There are times I am hesitant to approach people, for whatever reason, and I overcome whatever resistance I may feel, knowing that's what Tom would have wanted me to do, and that somewhere, he is watching, urging me on, applauding my efforts, admiring the ink.

As a tribute to Tom, I am reposting his tattoo, which he shared with us here, back in 2007.

It's not the best tattoo, but it's Tom's, and his spirit is infused here in Tattoosday. It's the least I can do for the friend that supported us so much in the early days. Here's to you, Tom!


Tattoos I Know: The Grim Reaper (originally posted September 11, 2007)


This is the sole tattoo of my friend and co-worker, Tom Wacker.

Tom designed and drew the art upon which this tattoo was based.

The Reaper is posed on Tom's biceps/deltoid and has resided there since 1984, when its host was a young lad of eighteen.

This is Tom's only tattoo and he has no plans to get more. He is proud of the fact that, because he designed it and because he then tore up the original design, it is a one-of-a-kind piece...

The tattoo was inked by Dean at Lola's Tattoos, then in Cliffside Park, but now in Bogota, New Jersey. Tom got this tattoo "because it was cool," although the tattooer tried to convince him not to get it because it was "too mean" for him. Twenty-three years later, Tom says he has no regrets about his ink.

Thanks, Tom!

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Friday the 13th: A Tattoosday Adventure

Today has finally arrived. A much-anticipated Friday the 13th. My wife, Melanie's, birthday. She was born on a Friday the 13th, so whenever it falls in March (the last one was in 1998, the next one is in 2015), it's always an event.

This Friday the 13th, I've taken the day off and plan on spending a large chunk of it with Melanie, waiting in line for what has become a New York City tradition: a lucky 13 tattoo courtesy of the good folks at Dare Devil Tattoo. Located on Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side, Dare Devil delivers $13 tattoos every Friday the 13th. They draw up some flash beforehand, and the clients get to choose from a selection of 13-themed, or Dare Devil-specific tattoos. As you'd imagine, they see a ton of customers, so we plan on arriving early to secure a spot.

10:30 AM - We hit the Manhattan Bridge, much later than we had hoped. We'd planned on a 10AM arrival. We're now anticipating a lengthy line.

10:45 AM - We've arrived. Maybe two dozen people ahead of us. The two young women who line up behind us point to a wall twenty feet away and said last month (a rare back-to-back Friday the 13th phenomenon), they lined up there and waited four hours. Best estimate at this point is to be done by 3 PM.

11:05 AM - A guy with a dog announces to the crowd, "We have a minor issue!" The group of two dozen people tenses up. They need us to line up North-South on Ludlow, as opposed to South-North. Apparently the neighboring store owner doesn't like her entrance blocked. Not a big deal. We all move, collectively exhaling. We do note that it is considerably colder out from under the scaffolding to the north. We are 21st and 22nd in line. There are 5 people behind us.

12:30 PM - They finally let in the first 10 people. The temperature has been struggling to get above freezing, and this has affected a little bit of the crowd's morale. However, we are given a reprieve. NYPD has received complaints about the 50+ people on the sidewalk, so a very nice Dare Devil employee named Rebecca takes our cell# and will call us, in about an hour to an hour and a half, by their estimate.

1:15 PM - We are sitting in a warm cafe on Avenue B. Caffeinating and restrooming. Heading back shortly.

2:00 PM - We are waiting across the street from the shop. Still no call....


2:15 PM - Peering in the window, we get our first look at the flash chosen for today's event.

And then, we enter the shop and things move quickly. Melanie fills out the requisite paperwork, we fork over a $20 bill ($13 for the tattoo, $7 for tip) and Rebecca asks Melanie which design she wants:


Understandably, she chooses a small "13". She would have gone for the Yankees logo, but there was no "13" in it. And wasn't that the point? Not to mention #13 is the jersey number of a much-maligned Yankee named Alex Rodriguez. She would have picked the cherry blossom flash, but the absence of the lucky digits was a deal-killer.

She didn't want any of the devils, and the various phallus and other crude designs are inappropriate.

We chatted with the young ladies from earlier in the day and discovered we had a mutual acquaintance, who they knew from school (Pratt).

And then Melanie was up. There was a brief debate about where the tattoo would go, in the middle of the back, or on the wrist. It is small enough that it can pass unnoticed on the wrist, or be covered by a bracelet or watch, should it be appropriate to do so. The wrist it is.























Jason June, the artist, jokes with us, as he tattoos the digits in under a minute. This certainly evens out the average tattoo time for the day, and makes it a quick pay-off for a long wait. The final product is a cute little "13" on the inside of her left wrist:


We walk back up to the front of the store, Rebecca asking Melanie how it went. Smiles all around. We put on our coats. Melanie asks me what time it is. I look at my BlackBerry and say "3:13".

I kid you not.

The stars have aligned and the sun is shining brightly outside. A perfect coda to a New York City tattoo adventure.

Tattoos I Know: Paul, Part 3, or, The Great Cover-Up of 2008

Earlier this year, I featured the first tattoo belonging to Paul, a co-worker and friend. Later on, he showed me his sleeve (here).

I am just getting around to show you his new work in progress, a cover-up of a tattoo on his right bicep, located above the first one of his that I featured here.

This isn't completed, but it does display a stage of the work that is interesting. Documenting it now will make it more interesting when the piece is completed.


That's an om symbol at the top of the piece. The basic design is a traditional Japanese half-sleeve. The work is done by Horisei at Chelsea Tattoo Company. Horisei inked my friend Rob's traditional Japanese tattoos (here).


Thanks again to Paul for sharing his work in progress here at Tattoosday. We're looking forward to seeing the final work in 2009!

Tom Wacker, 1966-2008

Late Thursday night I received a phone call I wish had never needed to be made.

My friend Sheri called me to tell me that her fiancé Tom had died unexpectedly earlier that day, the victim of an aneurysm. He was only 42.

People die every day in America, in the world. Young, old, healthy, sick. Death is a fact of life. Here at Tattoosday, we acknowledge that. Memorial tattoos abound.

But Tom was not just anyone. He was my friend, and he was with me from the beginning of this venture, one of Tattoosday's earliest fans and supporters. Not only did he offer up his own ink (reposted below), but he was always on the lookout for me, and saw most of the photos before they made it to the blogosphere. We'd exchange messages and updates over the weekends, and he always anticipated my return from lunch on weekdays, to see if I had spotted any awesome ink.

He knew how much I was yearning for a better camera, and he ended up getting me a new one, with Sheri, for my birthday.

And if we weren't talking ink, we were talking music, both of us big fans of Iron Maiden, Guns N' Roses, AC/DC, and Metallica.

Below is the post I ran of his tattoo, a grim reaper from his metalhead days. It's not spectacular work, but it graced his skin, and made him one of the inked nation.

Tattoos I Know: The Grim Reaper (originally posted September 11, 2007)


This is the sole tattoo of my friend and co-worker, Tom Wacker.

Tom designed and drew the art upon which this tattoo was based.

The Reaper is posed on Tom's biceps/deltoid and has resided there since 1984, when its host was a young lad of eighteen.

This is Tom's only tattoo and he has no plans to get more. He is proud of the fact that, because he designed it and because he then tore up the original design, it is a one-of-a-kind piece. He said that it was very painful because of the amount of black ink that went into it.

The tattoo was inked by Dean at Lola's Tattoos, then in Cliffside Park, but now in Bogota, New Jersey. Tom got this tattoo "because it was cool," although the tattooer tried to convince him not to get it because it was "too mean" for him. Twenty-three years later, Tom says he has no regrets about his ink.

Thanks, Tom!

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I have been posting less, of late, but Tom's spirit will live on through Tattoosday. For he is the audience I envision while writing. I know he would tell me not to mourn, but to keep on doing what I love, blogging ink, meeting new people, and showcasing their body art for all to enjoy.

I'll miss you, Tom. This blog's for you, too, wherever you are.

Tattoos I Know: Rob's Traditional Japanese Dragons

"The only things I'm going to regret are the things I don't do" --Rob

Rob doesn't show off his ink like a lot of people do. Granted, sharing one's tattoos with the public is part of the appeal for many people. But other folks get tattooed for more personal, private reasons. Many people feel that having a tattoo is in itself, fulfilling. They don't seek recognition to validate their body art. Others do.

That's one of the fun things about Tattoosday- when someone shares the personal in this public venue, it is often a fulfillment that has come to fruition. Other times, it's just fun.

I recently learned that the husband of one of my wife's old school mates, someone with whom I've talked football and who I see from time to time, is inked.

So the e-mails flew and the dinner date was set. My wife and I met up with the couple earlier in the month and went out for Vietnamese food. But before we left their place, Rob let me see his ink:










Unfortunately, my camera didn't like the light in the apartment, and I ended up with a lot of blurred or washed out photos. The above two were the best of the bunch. That's part of the reason it took me so long to post.

My camera really didn't do justice to the color and craftsmanship of the work. But, as luck would have it, the artist, Horisei, of Chelsea Tattoo Company, had clearer and much better pictures on the shop site.


When these were inked, Horisei was part of the staff at Rising Dragon Tattoos. Rising Dragon work has appeared previously here and here. However, Rising Dragon moved to new digs just recently and Horisei stayed in the old location at the new shop, renamed Chelsea Tattoo Company.

What Rob has are traditional Japanese panels that cover the upper arms, shoulders, and the connecting canvas of the chest corners.


Rob's work was done over approximately forty (40!) cumulative hours between March and June of 2007. The only thing that remains to be done is the coloring of the eyes.

If you look at the right piece, you'll see a kanji character representing the word "wolf".

That part was tattooed 15 years ago, in celebration of Rob's 30th birthday when he was living in San Francisco. And yes, it's an accurate representation of the proper kanji for "wolf".

Horisei, a master artist from Yokohama, Japan, was able to incorporate the "wolf" into the design, as it manifests itself in a new context, on a pearl clutched in the grip of a dragon.

These two dragons don't "mean" anything, in the traditional sense. A common misconception that people have is that tattoos must mean something. Rather, in Rob's case, they represent an inner appreciation for not just the art of the tattoo, but for traditional Japanese body art.

Tattoos don't have to be visible to have purpose. These two dragons reside on Rob's chest and feed his inner strength.

Rob even lent me his copy of A History of Japanese Body Suit Tattooing for further reference on the subject matter:


It is an honor to have them posted here for the world to see. Thanks to Rob for sharing, and thanks to Horisei and Chelsea Tattoo for the use of their better pictures that allow us here at Tattoosday to fully appreciate the craftsmanship that went into these pieces.

Tattoos I Know: Brooke's Back

Readers of Tattoosday may already be familiar with Brooke from her first appearance here, showing off her courage.

Well, she's back. Literally. The other day I spotted her wearing a sweater over a halter-top, so I thought I'd invite her back to show off her previously alluded-to koi.

From a distance, they look like wings, or perhaps even eyes:


But a closer examination reveals that they are two koi. For more on koi, jump here and follow the links.

Just to recap, Brooke is from Utah and currently lives in Hoboken.

Her first koi was inked on the right side of her back in May 2005. She was in Boise, Idaho, at the time, reeling from the end of a ten-year relationship. She was in a watering hole called Bittercreek Alehouse where, she estimates, she consumed a pitcher of mojitos. It was decided that a tattoo was on the menu for the evening so she headed over to 6th Street Studio in downtown Boise.

Brooke had heard the expression "bleeding out" when people had gone through the tattoo process. Rather than the threateningly negative meaning the phrase may have in the medical community, or the technical expression of flawed inking, Brooke understands the expression to reflect the fact that many people find the pain and the minimal blood shed of the tattoo process to be redemptive and healing.

Brooke spent time looking through books and found a design she liked, a traditional koi with a background of cherry blossom petals and waves. However, when working with John the artist, she had him enlarge the koi, brighten its color, and remove the background elements.


To her, the koi on her back symbolized moving past the ended relationship into a new chapter of her life.

Flash forward to December, seven months later, she was headed back to Boise. There was a celebrity event she wanted to attend with her friends, at which adult film director/producer/star Ron Jeremy was the main attraction. She met him at the event and the next night, was back at Bittercreek, enjoying their mojitos.

She headed back to 6th Street Studio and had John even out her back, placing another koi on the left side, facing the other.


The symmetry brought a nice balance to the ink on her back. John also gave a little touch-up to the original koi on her right side.

And here's a Tattoosday first: Brooke has provided pictures from the shop as she was getting the second koi:

And here's a photo with Brooke and Chris, the artist at 6th Street Studio:


Brooke loves her koi, which people often mistake for wings from afar. However, he finds them symbolic of her perseverance and courage.

There are many stories about koi and their significance in body art. One legend is that, when koi swim upstream and reach the source of the river, they transform into dragons. Brooke sees parallels to this in her own life, having swum away from home and reached the East Coast. She is not a dragon, but feels that her tattoos represent her transformation here in the New York City area.

Thanks gain to Brooke for sharing her ink and the great back story (no pun intended) behind these and the prior tattoo here. Next time you drink mojitos, think of koi and good fortune!

Tattoos I Know: Paul Part 2, or, The Traditional Japanese Sleeve

NOTE: This post was updated on March 31, 2008 with three additional photographs.

Here's a Tattoosday first: a repeat subject in this blog's history.

Paul appeared here first, showing off his first tattoo, a dragon. In this post, Paul returns, showing off a full sleeve on his left arm.

The sleeve consists of traditional elements: there is a dragon, a lotus, a mask, a lily, and a koi.

If you went back in a time machine 8 or 9 years to visit Paul's arm, you would have seen a grim reaper holding a skull on the bicep:


and some roses in a pattern on the forearm. These earlier tattoos have been covered by elements in the sleeve. Even when told where the original ink lies, it's extremely difficult to see the previous work.

So I will break this down into two sections: the upper arm and the lower arm.

The upper arm began with the dragon cover-up:

The dark rock below the dragon covered the old piece. This design, which included the aum or om symbol at the top of the arm, was inked by Carlos at Rising Dragon Tattoos in Chelsea back in 2001. The aum symbol is the Siddhaṃ script version and is a mystical and sacred symbol in Indian religions. Note that this om is different than the one that appeare din the first Tattoosday post here.

Paul was not 100% thrilled with the dragon, so when he decided to finish the sleeve, the following year, he went elsewhere.

The lower part of the arm, which is the more prominent part of the sleeve, was inked by Mike Bellamy at Red Rocket Tattoo in Manhattan, although at the time his shop was known as Triple X Tattoo.

The specific elements in the sleeve are all traditional irezumi, or Japanese tattooing, elements.

The largest piece is the koi. It appears to be a golden koi.

There's a whole discussion here on what koi tattoos symbolize.

In addition, one can read here about the symbolic nature of the lotus flower in tattoos.

Paul also referred to the other flower as a spider lily.

However, there are so many different varieties of specific families of flowers, that I often have a hard time finding good pictures to represent the tattoos.

The additional element in the sleeve which is only a small part, but is still interesting is what Paul referred to as the "kite mask":

Masks are traditional parts of Japanese tattoo design, but this specific one is hard to pinpoint for me. Here are some Chinese mask kites. Yet, the fact that I cannot easily find one on the web, just fascinates me more.

Paul estimates that the whole sleeve (including the dragon from 2001) took about 20 hours of work, and he did it in 6-7 sittings, mostly in 2002.

Paul sent me the following photos from the New York City Tattoo Convention, where Mike Bellamy did some of the work on Paul's sleeve:

That's Paul and Mike on the far left of the photo:

Thanks to Paul for helping me update this post with additional shots!

Tattoos I Know: Paul's First Tattoo

One of my co-workers, Paul, has been and still is, one of my subject matter experts when it comes to the tattoo. As far as I am aware, he is the only one at my company with a full sleeve.

In addition, he has a leg done as well. I've been keeping him in the loop on Tattoosday matters since I started blogging about ink last summer. We have talked about featuring his work for a while now and, with the meat of winter sending shorts and sleeveless apparel into hiding, it seemed like a good time to get his Tattoosday feet wet.

So, we are starting with the beginning, the dragon on the inside of his right forearm:


Many people may not realize, but tattooing was illegal in New York City until 1997. (More on that here.) Paul's first tattoo dates from "the Dark Ages," circa 1983.

As Paul relates, when he was 16, he went with his father to a tattooist in Alphabet City in Manhattan. The artist lived in an attic apartment, and one had to a) make an appointment to see him and b) know the password to gain admittance.

So while a young Paul was watching his father get tattooed, he realized that he wanted one, too.

His father agreed, as long as he thought long and hard about it and paid for it himself.

He found a dragon design he liked and returned with the money at a later date.

He told the tattooer, whose name he remembers as Davita, that he wanted it on his chest, but the artist looked at his slight frame (at 16, Paul estimates, he weighed 140 or so) and refused, saying Paul wouldn't be able to take the pain.

So it went on his arm. And he remembers that he paid $30 for the piece.

There was no significance to the dragon, other than Paul liked the aesthetics of it and had always liked dragons. Paul's left arm and leg are done in a Japanese style. He also has another tattoo on his chest and one on his back, perhaps the subjects of later posts.

Thanks to Paul for joining us on Tattoosday!

Update: After this posted, Paul remembered why he had the dragon done on his inner arm. He recalls an episode of Kung Fu, starring David Carradine, in which the main character lifts a barrel that is very hot. As a result (and I am certainly oversimplifying), he has a dragon burned onto his inner forearm. To the sixteen-year old Paul, this was way cool, so he chose that particular tattoo in that particular location after being told by the tattoo artist that a chest tattoo was out of the question.

Tattoos I Know: Tracy's Tributes

Tracy is a friend of mine who lives in Fort Drum, New York. She was in town last weekend, visiting family, and this was the first time I have seen her since Tattoosday was born over the summer.

I knew Tracy had at least one tattoo, because she and my wife have talked ink before. So when I saw her on Saturday, unexpectedly, I was happy that I had a couple of Tattoosday printouts in my pocket.

I explained the blog and asked if she'd like to participate. She was happy to oblige and, as fortune would have it, she was coming to an indoor soccer game the following day. Her nephew plays on the same team as my daughter Shayna. We tentatively agreed to talk tattoo the following day.

After the game Sunday, I asked if she was ready. She lifted the back of her shirt to reveal:


I was surprised, honestly. I was not expecting butterflies, but expecting the one above it which, as fate would have it, is later in this post. But I wasn't about to pass up a cool tattoo, so I took a picture of this one as well.

Tracy is a mother of two boys, Matthew and Danny, and these butterflies represent each of them, as they flutter and transform, as ones children are apt to do, growing from infants into people. Tracy had these inked three years ago in Victorville, when she was living at Ft. Irwin. She said that they had been done at "Victorville Designs," which has either changed names or gone out of business, based on this link.

These butterflies are nicely inked and really seem to float over the skin. Definitely a nice tattoo, from design to execution.

Above the butterflies is the tattoo that I had heard about:



A simple, basic script. The arced triad of three pillars of strength in many people's lives: "Faith. Family. Friends."

In order to understand this tattoo, we have to take a little side journey.

Whatever one's politics may be, or however one feels about what we are doing in Asia and the Middle East, one thing must be acknowledged: the men and women in our military are there to do a job, to serve our country, and to fight to not only protect the people there, but here as well. Thousands of American men and women have given their lives and their souls to serve our country.

As one may have guessed by two prior references (Ft. Drum and Ft. Irwin), Tracy is closely tied to the United States Army, as she is married to Pete, who is a soldier with the 10th Mountain Division, Light Infantry.

On October 31, 2006, Pete's friend and fellow soldier, Major Douglas E. Sloan, was killed in the line of duty in the Wygal Valley in Afghanistan, while serving with Company B, 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment. You can read more about Doug here at the Arlington National Cemetary website.

As every drop of spilled blood in the line of duty hits home, the loss of Major Sloan was devastating to his family and friends back in the States. The community of Fort Drum mourned Doug's passing and hearts went out to his wife Kerry and their children.

In December 2006, to pay tribute to Doug's memory, Tracy and three friends, including Kerry, went to Tattoos Forever in Evans Mills, NY, and each had the same inscription inked. In hindsight, Tracy recalls how funny it must have appeared, for four moms in minivans to drive up to the shop and collectively get tattooed.

It is a recurring theme on tattoo shows. Memorial tattoos are among the most popular types of body art. People mourn, heal, and remember through the art of the tattoo. And a piece of the loved one lives on, for years, in the flesh of the survivors, who gain strength and hold on to the memory of the departed.

The alliterative mantra of "Faith, Family, and Friends" reminds not only the tattooed, but those around them, of the most important things in life.

I want to thank Tracy for sharing her tattoos, and the stories behind them. I would add a special nod of gratitude to the memory of Major Douglas Sloan, who I never knew. Yet, by virtue of this tattoo, helped remind me of the sacrifice that our soldiers make day in, day out, and their families they leave behind.

Some related links:

A touching tribute to Major Sloan from YouTube:



Also of note, Occidental College professor Mary Beth Heffernan's "The Soldier's Skin," currently on exhibit at Pasadena City College.