San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
WHY MY MOTHER STOPPED TALKING TO ME FOR A WEEK
Mom wouldn’t talk to me for a week.
What was my egregious mistake? Did I say something disrespectful? Did I renege on a promise? Did I commit the unpardonable sin of forgetting our weekly Sunday afternoon phone call?
Nope. Not a chance. Negative, Ghost Rider. It was worse.
My unfathomable act: I got a tattoo. And I was 43 years old.
Tattoos had always fascinated me. When I was a child of the 1980s, they were mainly relegated to sailors on shore leave and people in street gangs. I did not know very many people who had one. Out of those few, they were mostly men.
But whether a person was touting the countries they had served in while in the military or perhaps professing undying love to their significant other (very risky), the sheer act of getting a tattoo was both enticing and dangerous.
Putting ink on one’s skin, no matter the size and no matter the reason, was so bold. It was so permanent.
Then, as I grew into my adolescent years, an older sibling started getting tattoos. Gasp! These new artistic additions were not for naval purposes or to express any gang loyalty. It was simply creativity. A zodiac symbol on a forearm here. A sports team insignia on a shoulder there. To me, they were cool, another symbol of burgeoning older-sibling independence.
Growing up in a conventional Latino-irish household, Mom or mamá, would have none of it. Tattoos were not only frowned upon. Her Colombian upbringing taught her they were a defacing of the skin. It was like graffiti by a needle. Dad did not really care for them, even though as a United States Marine Corps veteran, he had known plenty of tattooed teammates since age 17. But there was one key reason his Irish temper did not boil over like my mom’s South American one. The first tattoo in our family was brandished by a boy.
This revealed some societal stereotypes that were present in our household and beyond. Could my sister get a tattoo? Absolutely not. That was very unladylike. Could I, perhaps when I reached a teenage status, put a Padres insignia on my skin? Although I am male, the answer was the same: No! The reason was because I had a phys
ical disability. And my father was among those who believed that people with disabilities, in societal terms, just did not do expressive and aggressive things like that. We were to accept our lot in life and certainly not show off our bodies.
As the years passed, our parents forgave the growing trend of tats in our familia. They still fumed, but they forgave. Piercings also became more en vogue and when my sister — older than me by three years — got her first tattoo and piercings that were not in her ears, I thought Mom was going to faint in her Volvo.
But my parents grew to accept her ink and piercings, too. Because society was starting to accept that, yes, women liked to express their thoughts, feelings and emotions through skin art as well.
In the new millennium, I started noticing fellow disabled persons not only not hide, but celebrate their disability on their bodies. Guys in wheelchairs drew copies of their mode of transportation with f lames trailing them. Women who were amputees, or had some other form of disability, drew provocative body types that espoused their sexuality.
But never me. I did not believe my extended family would approve. I did not believe society would approve.
Until the summer of 2017. Two months after my 43rd birthday, my biological father passed away. (The parents who raised me were actually an aunt and uncle of mine.) Having grown up, for numerous reasons, not getting to see my father much left an impenetrable hole in my heart. Although I was not raised by him, I still loved him. I had so many questions about him. Everyone who knew him consistently brought up ways I was like him, both in resemblance and behavior. I badly missed a man I barely knew.
So I broke all my previously held societal norms, and I marched right into a tattoo parlor in my East Village neighborhood and asked to speak to an artist. I explained about my father, who had passed away only two days earlier, and that I wanted three things emblazoned on my right shoulder. His name, the name of another sister who had died of cancer five years earlier, and a cross. The cross was crucial because of my Christian faith and, unlike a sports team or political party, I knew I would never renounce it.
He obliged with both of their names written as a scroll draped over a cross. It was the most liberating $200 I had ever spent.
It was a permanent memorial, one I could glance at and feel comforted by in moments of melancholy.
A midlife crisis? Perhaps. But I was grateful for this indelible inscription.
As time has moved on, more tattoos have been added to my body. A heart surrounded by Colombian and American f lags. An illustration of me with prosthetic arms raised aloft, urging others, “Let’s Go!” over “MATT 19:26” — my favorite scripture — to remind me that “With God all things are possible.” An homage to one of my mentors at Local Church, who went to heaven this year. An homage to Mom, who went to heaven in 2019.
Before she passed, she called me on a Sunday, right after I had added the U.s.-colombian tattoo.
“How’s your left shoulder?” she asked. “Did the ink dry?”