Thirty hours doesn’t sound like much until you’re the one lying face-down on a table while a needle recreates every irregular edge of a birthmark, session after session, over the course of several months.
There were nights I left the studio with my whole side throbbing, wondering if I was insane for doing this. Tattoos are supposed to be things you choose for yourself — a symbol, a memory, a piece of art. Mine was none of those things. Mine was a copy. An exact, deliberate, methodical copy of my son’s least favorite part of himself.
But that was the point.
I didn’t tell him what I was doing at first. I wanted it finished — or close to it — before I said anything, because I didn’t want him to feel like this was a performance for his benefit. I wanted it to just… exist. The way his birthmark existed. Something that had simply always been there.
When it was finally done, close enough that you’d have to look twice to tell which one of us had been born with it, I sat him down and pulled off my shirt.
He stared for a long time. Long enough that I started to worry I’d misjudged this completely — that instead of comfort, I’d handed him something confusing, even upsetting.
Then he reached out and touched it, right where the color matched his own chest almost perfectly.
“You did this for me?” he asked.
“I did this so you’d know you’re not alone in it,” I said. “Not ever.”
He didn’t say much else that day. Kids rarely do, when something is too big for words. But two weeks later, he wore a t-shirt to the pool — a regular one, short-sleeved, nothing special — and he took it off without being asked, without hesitating, without scanning the deck first to see who was watching.
He jumped in. He didn’t look back to check if anyone noticed the birthmark.
Somebody’s older brother did notice, actually. He asked about it, the way kids ask about anything unfamiliar. My son just shrugged and said, “My dad has one too. Same exact spot.”
He said it like it was boring. Like it wasn’t worth a second sentence.
That’s all I ever wanted for him — for it to be boring. Unremarkable. A fact about his body and nothing more, no different than the color of his eyes or the length of his fingers.
People have asked me since if it hurt. Thirty hours under a needle, recreating a birthmark I was never born with, just so my son wouldn’t feel singled out in a locker room.
Yes. It hurt.
I’d do it again tomorrow.
