Item #9 on my 33 in 3 list: get a tattoo. Done and done.

Mom and I have been talking about tattoos for years but have never pulled the trigger. As my move to Colorado looms larger, days are starting to spin by faster and faster, ushering in a sense of immediacy that hasn’t been there before. We’ve now passed the one year mark—Dan and I plan to move to Colorado around October of 2017—and I think that’s a large part of what finally nudged my mom and me into action. 

 My first tattoo is an arrow in my inner forearm, pointing toward my wrist, and my mom has an identical arrow in the middle of her back, pointing up. We’d gone back and forth about which symbol meant something to us both—a book, a tree, a bird? Ultimately we settled on the arrow for many personal reasons, including a hysterical lack of navigational skills that must be nestled deep in our shared blood.

To me, this arrow is the one that will always point to my mom, no matter where I am. I can’t imagine ever tiring of that image.
The process itself was wonderful; immediately after walking a half-marathon, we popped into Beelistic Tattoo and secured immediate walk-in appointments. Lee created my arrow first, then Olivier worked on my mom’s. It stung like hell but this was a 3min tattoo. Survivable. The arrow was mom and my “test tattoo,” a smaller, simpler piece of art than our dream tattoo that would let us see what it felt like, how we liked the permanency, before committing to a larger design.

After one week our tattoos are only half-healed, but we’ve already been texting each other furiously about “the real tattoos” that we’re aching for. I’m glad we didn’t put this off another minute.