Jun 27, 2019 3 min read

There are two kinds of mothers in the world: mothers who hope their children will never get a tattoo and mothers who hope their children will never get a tattoo but know they will.

I fall into the latter group. One of my children has a smallish tattoo and the other has none – at least none that I can see. That’s the thing about tattoos: it’s possible to hide them in places that mothers no longer get to see.

You can’t drive down a city block anymore without passing an ink parlor; sitting on a busy beach can be like reading a comic strip as it walks by. This week I interviewed a young man whose arms and neck were so covered with graphics I was getting distracted trying to read him. As he moved his arms while talking, I saw a tattoo of a laughing man near his elbow. Someone famous? I couldn’t tell because it was moving around so much.

Among my close circle of girlfriends, only one has a tattoo, something small on her ankle. She got it to mark the end of her cancer treatment. I thought about doing the same thing, but only for a minute. I’m not the tattoo type.

Actually, I do have tattoos, a tiny blue dot on each hip, needled into my flesh on the first day of my radiation treatment. For the next 30 days, the technicians would use the dots as reference points when they lined up the beams. It hurt a little when they poked at me with the ink.

It’s been suggested that I could turn the dots into something pretty, like bees or butterflies. I never gave it much serious thought because, well, the ink dots are on my smooshy parts. I could not see them without contorting in a mirror, and because they are located in a place usually covered by underwear, I would have to be naked to see them anyway, and why would I want to do that?

The Pew Research Center found that more than a third of people aged 18 to 29 have at least one tattoo; more women are inked than men are. And surprisingly, more middle-aged people have tattoos than their kids do, which makes me wonder about those warnings that tattoos spread with age. As the years pass, that cute butterfly on the small of the back can morph to look more like something in the bat family.

A friend told me of a work colleague who proudly announced to her staff that she had gotten her college mascot inked onto her rear end. Now, I am proud of my alma mater, but you will never see a mighty Vulcan on my butt. I don’t even own a Cal U. sweatshirt.

Which is not to say I think less of the inked among us. I see so many tattoos that my eye has adjusted. Some are even beautiful works of art.

Does that mean I want my kids to have them? If it were up to me, I’d say no. But if one of them were to get a small, discreet Mama inked onto a forearm or ankle, who am I to object?