The Story of My Daughter’s Tattoo

[My daughter is taking a Creative Non-Fiction Writing course this term, and here is her first paper:]

A rush of warm adrenaline surges through my body. I hear the buzz more than I feel the pain. I’m in the Triangle Tattoo Shop and Museum in Fort Bragg, California – a tiny NorCal coastal town. It’s tall and narrow, with funky staircases and walls crammed with framed tattoo pictures. It reminds me of 12 Grimmauld Place – a magical building impossibly squished between the houses of normality. My mom is next to me, squeezing my sweaty palm.

For years, I had shown her sketches. “No,” she said while slicing tomatoes in the kitchen. “No,” she said while filling in her sudoku. “No,” she said while stretching on her yoga mat. I show her a new sketch, this time of a manta ray – maybe I’ll get a different answer while she scrolls her iPad? “Hm,” she says. “Maybe,” she says. “Show me more sketches,” she says.

Maybe it was that I was leaving for college. Maybe it was that she has a Stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis. Maybe it was because we had swam with the most beautiful manta rays in Hawaii. Maybe it was because in Moana, the dead grandma comes back to her granddaughter in the form of a manta ray. But somehow, we ended up in the magical Triangle Tattoo Shop and Museum in Fort Bragg California, getting matching manta ray tattoos on our wrists. They now tie us together 561 miles apart. I know that someday when she passes, they will tie us together through more than 561 miles of distance.