A Mother's Day Gift That Keeps on Giving

I have an unusual family; I admit it. I was touched, therefore, when last year, for Mother's Day, my sister Ellen, and her youngest son Josiah kept up the non-traditional family values. To commemorate the holiday, they both set out to Yankee Tattoo in Burlington to get mother-son coordinating tattoos.

In the interest of sharing the tale of this unusual event with this year’s Mother’s Day revelers, I spoke to both of them. Josey emailed from his apartment in San Francisco, and Ellen from her home in Essex, Vermont.

Josey is a gorgeous creature, blond-haired like his mother with hazel-eyes, six foot tall with that funky, yet totally calculated style that twenty-somethings seem to covet these days. It was Josey's idea to get the tattoos. I think many of us romanticize our mother’s youth, pulling out faded pictures of them looking young and beautiful, imagining the mysterious lives they led before we were born. Josey is no exception.

"Mom was a tattoo artist in the 70's in New York, and I have always been fascinated with that aspect of her life. I loved the idea of sharing an experience with her that, at one point, was such a big part of her everyday life." You would never know it from looking at her, but my sister Ellen, the recently retired hospital administrator, once led a very different kind of life.

Back in the 70’s she was apprenticed to Spider Webb — a famous tattoo artist and founder of the Tattoo Club of America — and actually co-owned a studio with him. At first glance there is no evidence of her inked past. "What’s funny is that people expect me to be heavily tattooed – and I’m not. Spider always discouraged me because he said I would someday be working in the “straight world” and would be sorry. He was right about the straight world, but I am not sure it would have mattered. And I've never been sorry."

This mother-son ritual was not a stretch for her – and it was Josey's second tattoo. The tattoos themselves are coordinating, but not identical. Ellen has a heart with a spray of flowers with a tribal flourish on her right hip, and Josey's upper arm boasts the same design linked with a heart that says, "Madre." They had originally planned on the more traditional (at least in this neck of the woods) "Mom," but Ellen suggested they use Spanish instead as a way of bringing our mother into the ritual and spanning three generations.

Article Author: Ann Hagman Cardinal

Ann Hagman Cardinal is a freelance writer as well as the Marketing Director for Vermont Collge of Fine Arts. Her first novel, Sister Chicas--co-authored with two other Latina writers—was released in 2006 by NAL/Penguin Books. …

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