Rose
I lay there, on my stomach with my right arm stretched out to the side anxiously waiting for her to begin. I always talked about doing this, but I never really pictured it. Even when I was lying there, at 19, not knowing if I should have waited to do it later in life. Until it was too late.
I hear the machine start to buzz and I think to myself, “She would have probably hated this.”
Every time I went to my nana and gramps’s house, I always had something to dress up in. I would run to my mother's old bedroom and tear open the drawers to find the plastic, sparkly heels that clinked on the dense, wood floors. I quickly pulled on the sheer skirt and walked around the house, waiting for my family to compliment my outfit. They always said, “So adorable,” but my nana always made me feel a little extra special about it.
She was an artist too, and her work was always amazing. There was a workshop in my grandparents' basement where they both worked on all their art projects. The basement scared me because of the slap of the mouse traps and the wood smell from my grandfather's wood shop, but I always admired my nana's art space. My sister and I would parade down the creaky steps just to see what they had been working on since the last time I saw them.
As I got older, my obsession with playing dress-up evolved into my love for fashion. I would sit at a computer for hours with my fabric scissors, that my nana had given me for my birthday one year, watching YouTube videos on how to turn an old t-shirt into a trendy new one. Moments like these made me realize how much I knew that I wanted to pursue fashion, which led to me obsessing over it. I was able to take two fashion classes during high school which were key opportunities that made me want to jump right into the fashion industry. My nana taught me how to sew at an early age, so the basic fashion classes were an easy A for me. As high school went on, I got more creative with what I was making. I started with upcycling a bunch of my dad's old pairs of jeans, then moving on to creating something less of a wearable garment, like making a trash bag silhouette with fabric where I wrote common slurs against women to represent how women can be treated as “trash.” I got lost in my projects, so I would stay up for all hours of the night working on my designs when I should have been getting sleep.
When my grandmother passed my freshman year of high school, I was lost. I could never wrap my head around the idea of death and to this day I still cannot. When my mom and I got the phone call from Gramps, he was hysterical. He did not know what to do and neither did we. As we pulled over to the side of the road, we had to help Gramps through losing his life partner whom he had been in love with since high school. I could not breathe, but my mother and I had to continue our drive. For the rest of the day, it did not process to me that she was gone; I would never hear her voice again or talk to her about art.
Now that I am 19, I have found new connections with my nana that I did not know I had when I was younger. Deciding to go to art school was influenced by my nana’s love of art and the constant encouragement that I had an artistic eye. I still feel like I share my artwork with her when I talk to Gramps about art. We go back and forth talking about our drawings and his sculptures. We spent time doodling roses together on notepads because it was my nana’s favorite flower. He shares stories about my nana and the large loom she used to have in the basement. The simple details he shares help me connect with her even though she is gone.
After an hour and a half of laying on my stomach with the buzzing of the machine in my ear, it was done. A tattoo of a rose dedicated to my nana. A rose that symbolizes my love of art that I share with my grandparents. An inspiration for me when times get hard, to remember that art is in my blood and my grandma is with me every day. Yes, she would have hated that I got a tattoo, but to me it’s more than a tattoo, it’s another piece of art that I have created for my Nana Ellen.