A Round Tuit

Almost a year ago, dear friend R got a tattoo on her foot in memory of our little brother, Jeff. I found it a fine idea and after a brief conversation with R, (consisting of me pointing and asking "would you mind if I?" "Dude, go for it.") I resolved to match it.... at some point.

R found another tatt she wanted and she also wanted to run away for a day so she contacted me earlier in the week and asked if I would come with her, and offered to spring for the memorial tatt for me, if I wanted to go ahead and do it. I did, and so today, we finally got a Round Tuit.

We spent a lot of the day talking about memories, of Jeff and others that we've lost, and arrived at the tattoo shop she'd used for her memorial tatt in that sad-but-good mood. On arrival we discovered that the artist who had done her foot had left, but the artist that came up free next didn't bat an eye at being asked to copy a tattoo from someone else's foot. She simply grabbed some tracing paper, knelt down, and traced off a rough outline, studied the details for a moment, and vanished, to re appear with a drawing that if it wasn't identical was so close as to render any differences moot.

Then I got tattooed... in a place that I won't spend a lot of time explaining what the image means, because the people likely to see it in the flesh in an everyday situation will know what it's all about.

About the time I started feeling the needle and doing deep breathing exercises to prevent tensing up and making things difficult, R started choking on suppressed laughter. After a few moments I asked her what in the world the problem was, and this followed:

"I keep hearing Jeff like he's over my shoulder."

"What's he saying?"

"MAKE IT BIGGER! BIGGER!"

At which point the artist had to pause because I started laughing, simply because I could hear it too.

Love you little bro, you are always with me.