My First Tattoo

Hi, I'm Danika, and if my name represents who I am as a person, then it represents my love for nostalgia, creativity, imagination, and aesthetics; so getting a tattoo, you could argue, was inevitable for me.

I remember the first time I saw a tattoo when I was very young. It was on my uncle Gordie’s forearm and I remember being fascinated by how it was going to be there forever. I would ask him questions about the picture, how it stayed there, what the experience was like getting it done, and I would trace the black-turned-green, smudgy shape of it with my tiny fingertip.

I started considering the idea of a tattoo for myself when I was beginning junior high. I drew a heart on my wrist every day with a permanent marker and carried on doing so for years. I came up with my first tattoo idea at the ripe age of twelve, and eight years later, it became the tattoo I wound up putting in my skin permanently.

Why did it take eight whole years for me to mark my skin with ink? Well, I certainly wasn't about to get a tattoo as a preteen, and it took until I was twenty years old for my parents to finally warm up to the idea. Yes, I know that at eighteen I could very well make up my own mind about what I wanted to do with my body, but it wasn't about allowance or permission; it was about two things: respect for my parents, and more than that, the desire to have my parent’s happiness for me so I could be happier about it myself. Besides, there was zero deniability that the idea I chose was special, unique, and important to me. I knew, and I knew they knew too, that it was something I would never regret.

So, what was my perfect idea? I'm so glad you asked.

My tattoo is of a swing set with two swings and musical notes that ascend and fade away from it. The tattoo is simple, but what it represents is deep and complex.

The swing set itself represents the timeline of my life, and trust me, it does so accurately.

I was in a swing set since before I could walk. My parents bought one of those indoor baby swings with the springs at the top and as a baby and a toddler, I would swing and bounce and twirl to my heart’s utmost content. When I began to outgrow the baby swing, my dad installed two “big girl” swings in our basement for the winter as well as out in our back yard for the summer. Two swings because by then, my little sister had been born and also introduced to swinging. My sister, Davon, had a bright orange swing that was shaped like a rocket ship, and mine was a candy apple red plastic chair, complete with a back rest and a yellow, heavy plastic seatbelt that slid down the ropes and attached to the chair between my tiny legs. On VHS, taken on my dad’s now outdated video camera, somewhere in a tote bin in our parents basement, there are hours of footage of mom and dad pushing us back and forth on those swings and singing to us while we giggled and shrieked with glee.

But of course, there came the day where we had also outgrown those swings and it was time for an upgrade.

After we had moved out of the city and onto our acreage, we were gifted a hand-me-down swing from our young uncle Cody. It had a metal frame that was lazily painted painter’s-tape green and it consisted of two regular swings with chain handles and rubber seats, as well as a third swing which as kids we referred to as the “Bench Chair Swing.” The Bench Chair Swing was a two-seater, which we found to be pretty impressive. The wooden seats faced one another and had metal tubes around the chains to hold onto and to keep the structural integrity of the double seat design. Though we used the Bench Chair Swing from time to time, the novelty wore off quick. However, we spent countless hours side by side on the rubber-seated swings. That is where we would sing songs together, make up wild imaginary scenarios, and fall into deep conversation, well, as deep of conversation as two little girls could muster. Eventually, we started to outgrow that swing set too. That is when my dad decided it was time that he built one for us himself. See, we used the swing set so frequently and for so long, that we would regularly wear the chains right through the brackets that held them at the top, and we would swing so hard that we would lift the metal frame right from the ground at each stride, so my dad knew he had a real project ahead of him.

After a ton of research, he got industrial grade materials from the same source that public schools get all their playground equipment from. He built us a very tall, wooden swing set that was secured deep underground and found the heaviest duty brackets he could to reduce (but not eliminate) how often they needed to be replaced. The seats were wooden and flat, and it wasn't until I had finished growing that I could finally touch the ground at ease with my feet. It was, I have to admit, the creme de la creme of swing sets.

Davon and I never got bored of swinging. It became the place where we could think the most freely and feel the most safe. It was a place where we could clear our heads and the place that often brought us the most joy. Instead of growing out of swinging, we grew with it. Imaginary conversations got replaced with iPods and earbuds, and we would listen to our favorite songs full blast for hours as we rocked back and forth on our swings. Well into and well past our teenage years.

I am an adult now, and I still find myself gravitating back to sitting on a swing and carelessly moving through the wind whenever I crave the feeling of contentment and bliss. So, you see, a swing set is the best representation of the timeline of my life. It is a single structure that has been a part of my life for as long as I have been around.

On my tattoo, there are two swings: one for myself, and one for Davon for while she has always been beside me on the swing, she has also always been beside me in every other element. I am very fortunate that my best friend was born into my family, and that I got to live with her for most of my life.

Davon and I are a little over a year apart, so I don't have any memories of her not being around and from the minute she was born, she's been the person that I've cared for and loved the most deeply. Waking up as children, our first instinct was always to go find one another so that we could be together. Whether we were playing our silly little games or watching television, we were always, always together. We developed a very harmonious relationship that ensured we rarely fought and always sought to understand one another. She and I are very balanced in the ways we get along and the ways we help each other. We are and always have been each other’s biggest motivators and cheerleaders. We are each other’s shoulder to cry on, and each other’s rocks when one of us starts floating too far away. Davon is and always has been the absolute most important person in my life, and so she gets the second swing on my timeline.

There is a third thing that has always been a crucial and prominent element of my life, and that is music. Family reunions consist of guitar circles and harmony; my notebooks are filled with lyrics I have written, and the piano seat is the seat where I feel the most comfortable. I love to sing, and I love to hear songs, and in my mind, my life is lived out as a musical. Music for me, as I understand it is with many others, is a permanent and necessary part of who I am.

For my first tattoo, I wanted it to be a simple image that summed up my love and my life, and I still think I have done a very good job at it, but the story of how I got my tattoo is just as compelling as the story of what it means.

Like I have mentioned, I had wanted it for a very long time. Finally, in my early adulthood, I decided to pursue it. I was motivated when a website called Tattoo-Do (I am sure you have heard of it,) held a “contest,” I suppose, where for a small fee, you could submit your idea and artists from around the world would try to capture your image and you could go through and pick the one you liked the most. So late one night after stumbling across the ad for it on Facebook, I decided to submit my idea to Tattoo-Do. Over the next couple of weeks, I would frequent my email, eager to see the next artist’s execution of my vision until finally, I found one I fell in love with.

I was mailed a temporary tattoo of the image so I could try it on and see if I liked it, but I never put it on. Instead, I found more value in keeping it intact, and storing it in my memory box to go back on. Remember when I described myself as nostalgic?

I already knew the shop where I wanted to get it done. It was a two-and-a-half-hour drive away in Calgary, Alberta. I had learned of this shop a couple of years prior when my friend took me there to get my conch pierced, and I fell in love with the employees; the professionalism, and the vast education they had on body mods so I emailed the shop and set up an appointment.

My mom finally reluctantly agreed to my desire for a tattoo, but she had a condition: the tattoo must be small. Ideally, it should be able to fit on a business card. Here's the thing, the tattoo that I got does not at all fit on a business card.

When I got to the shop, the artists there explained to me that with the detail on the image that I gave to them as a reference, it would quickly become blurry and smudged if it was made to be that small. Personally, I had no problem with the tattoo being larger to accommodate the detail but imagining my mother’s disappointment filled me with anxiety and stress.

Davon came with me to my appointment, and I am about to prove everything I just said to describe her, and my relationship with her. First of all, she came with me- like I said, always by my side. She could read the worry on my face as the artists in the shop explained the size problem to me, and she handled it.

She pulled me aside and she asked me if I wanted it to be bigger. She told me to put the thought of our mom’s reaction on the back burner and asked me to answer her honestly. I told her if it was bigger, it wouldn't bother me any. She then turned to the artists and said to go through with it. She immediately messaged mom to explain the situation and began to diffuse her so her reaction wouldn't be as intense with me later. She held my hand in the waiting room and spoke calmly and joyfully to me, cracking jokes to replenish the genuine smile on my face, and to replace my worry with the excitement I deserved to have. She sat with me through my whole tattoo, updating me on the progress and on how great she insisted it looked. She built me up when it was finished and encouraged me to express my elation with it. She made my first tattoo experience the absolute best that it could be.

Though calmed down a little bit by Davon, my mom was still very obviously and verbally disappointed with my tattoo. For a long time after, when I was wearing tank tops or other articles that exposed my tattoo, my mom would gently caress my arm and say horrible things like, “you're so pretty, I sure wish you didn't ruin your skin with that ugly blob of ink.”

Harsh, I know. Thanks, Mom.

Before you get the wrong impression, my mom has always been an excellent mother. She is still the same mother that pushed me on the swing for hours in the basement when I was very small, she just can be very forward and blunt, and often, (unintentionally) cruel when expressing her opinions. Yes, it did hurt. It got under my skin and it bothered me a lot. I desperately wanted her to be happy for me. She did not have to agree with tattoos or understand the desire for them, but still, she should have understood my love for mine, and she should have built me up about it the same way Davon did. Eventually, my mom did come around. She began to tell others about my tattoo and the story behind it with enthusiasm and pride, and she started to appreciate the ugly blob of ink on my skin. In fact, my admiration for tattoos and having one myself encouraged her to explore the idea, and now, she has a couple of her own. The moral there is to always try to understand the things you do not like, because you just might surprise yourself by finding value in whatever it is after all.

So, there you have it; the complete story behind all the elements of my first tattoo. It has now been a part of my body for six years, and I still get tingly and warm when I catch a glimpse of it in the mirror. I am so glad that it is an everlasting part of who I am.