Tattoo history…and future?

Ever since Tom and I met, we’ve both wanted tattoos. On my first trip to Lansing to visit him, we stopped at a few tattoo parlors to see if anything caught my eye—and it did.

I really wanted a celtic knot. But there was a problem. I only wanted a tattoo the size of a quarter—but the artists all told me that in order to get nicely defined lines for the knot, the tattoo would have to be at least the size of a baseball. Egads, no way. So there went my hopes of a tattoo. (I’m sure my parents are breathing sighs of relief at this point in the story, LOL.)

I seem to remember Tom wanting Wolverine (X-Men character) and me thinking it was absolutely hideous…so I didn’t really push the tattoo idea any farther! (He didn’t know at the time I didn’t like it—I only recently told him…so long after the fact that it didn’t matter anymore!)

So life goes on, and I’ve always kept one eye out for the perfect tattoo, still keeping the celtic knot on the back burner. (On a sidenote, my love for celtic knots was alive. It was evidenced at the wedding—our invitation had a celtic border, as did our wedding programs. I also owned a few pieces of celtic knot jewelry, as well.)

Then we move to Jacksonville, the home of Camp Lejeune and about 137 tattoo parlors…so the idea is refreshed in my mind. Along the way, I found out that I could get a smaller celtic knot and the design would be fine…but, I had started noticing and liking tribal tattoos. So I set off to find a great tribal tattoo that I liked. But nothing hit me. And if I’m going to alter my body in this manner, it’s going to be something I LOVE!

Fast forward to one afternoon working in the Staples Copy Center. A guy brought in some artwork to be laminated. Turns out it’s tattoo work. And it’s tribal. But not only is it tribal, if you look close enough, it’s actual words:

Pride Tribal Tattoo

Can you see what this says? PRIDE. I thought that was sooooo cool. He had about three pages of different words (I only showcase Pride since it’s one of the smallest ones), the most elaborate being NEVER AGAIN, which would go across your entire shoulder span.

But anyway, I thought it would be great if he could design one around the word FATE. Why fate? Fate has been how I’ve always described meeting Tom: “It was fate.” (This is also what we’ll eventually have inscribed on our wedding rings…if I can ever bear to part with mine for a few days.) I had actually thought of having “fate” as my tattoo, but I didn’t want a plain word. So, I had my heart set on a tribal fate—if the artist could design it. Of course, I wanted to think more about it (I’m certainly not rushing into this tattoo thing) so I put the designs away when Tom left.

Fast forward to about two weeks ago, when I really started thinking about it again. I decided to Google tattoos and tribal tattoos and celtic tattoos and see where it led. And it led to Chinese characters for words…like fate, love, honesty, truth, etc. And I thought that was perfect, too. That way I could say FATE without having the word… I sent the links to Tom and he really liked Commitment/Devotion. So we could have “matching” tattoos, each with our own special words.

So that’s where it stands. I just have to decide whether to get FATE in tribal or Chinese… Stay tuned.

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