Inked

The thought of getting a tattoo had never crossed my mind until May, when the Universe dropped hints in quick succession.

Detail of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Kelp Forest exhibit

THE VOICE came out of left field.

“Get the sardines tattooed on your arm,” it said. It wasn’t a whisper. It wasn’t a suggestion. It was a Field of Dreams moment, like when the cornfield spoke to Kevin Costner.

It was early August. I was sitting on a bench in a darkened alcove of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, mesmerized by the kelp forest exhibit and the school of sardines that swirled within.

The thought of getting a tattoo had never crossed my mind until May, when the Universe dropped hints in quick succession. The first: in a “suggested for you” Instagram post of a tattoo done by a San Francisco-area artist. A sardine tattoo. “Cool,” I thought, my thumb pausing a beat before scrolling. The second: in a swanky seafood restaurant where a school of 60 or more fish made of clear blown glass dangled from the black ceiling above me in a graceful, undulating swath. I glanced upward between bites to admire the shape.

By June, I couldn’t shake the idea of getting tattooed, but I didn’t know why. In July, I met with a tattoo artist who helped me create a design: a school of sardines and three larger fish – one for my husband and one for each of my sons.

Should I do it? Commit to having an illustration indelibly pierced into my body? On that day in early August, the Universe said yes. Go the distance, the voice told me. It will all make sense. It will be an image worth a thousand words.

I WAS SITTING in the aquarium that day because 36 years ago, it helped my husband and me survive a rocky chapter in our lives.

We had relocated from Rhode Island to California with our two pre-school kids because I got a great job offer. The move, however, was a mistake for all kinds of reasons.

We found solace at the aquarium. An afternoon adventure with the kids led to monthly visits for a year. It became our happy place.

There was a ritual to each visit. We began at the kelp forest, a panoramic tank as long as an average blue whale and nearly three stories high. We’d spot sharks and eels, colorful rockfish and crabs poking around live kelp that swayed to the rhythm of a current created by a wave machine up top. Invariably, a school of sardines glittered somewhere within the forest, dividing and regrouping depending on what swam nearby.

Next, we lingered at the otter exhibit and the jellyfish display, then headed over to see if the octopus was visible in its cave-like tank. There were other tanks, other creatures we spent time exploring before finally finishing at a spot where another school of sardines swam infinitely in a circle. From there, we’d head to a nearby arcade where we bought caramel corn or ice cream for the ride home.

The aquarium was a source of family stories that still make us laugh. The time our three-year-old saw a scuba diver cleaning the windows of the kelp forest tank and declared “That’s what I want to be … a submarine!” The time I confided to the boys that if there was such a thing as reincarnation, I wanted to come back as an otter. Eating whale bread – sourdough rolls we bought for lunch at the cafeteria. The speed with which the words “time for caramel corn” flew out of the kids’ mouths.

We left California after 18 months, returning to Rhode Island to start over again. But we never forgot about the aquarium and how it made us feel. It was calm, safe, the eye in our hurricane.

I NEEDED ITS SAFETY again, all these years later, because I felt like I had finally escaped a riptide that caught me one afternoon in early April. On that day, my husband confided to me that an online con artist was trying to blackmail him. I was sucked into a storm of exhausting emotions, hard truths and tears that threatened to take us both out to sea. We didn’t drown though. In the months that followed, we held on to one another, learned how to swim again, and found a new current.

In August, the current briefly led us back to the aquarium where I happily spent 45 minutes in thrall to the kelp forest. My breath slowed. My brain stopped racing. I was the kelp, swaying with the current. I was the rock fish suspended in its watery universe. I was the dazzling school of sardines zigging and zagging between beams of sunlight.

Two weeks later, I reclined on the artist’s table where she poked my skin thousands of times with her needles. Fish now wrap around my forearm from just below the crook of my elbow to just above my wrist.

In the weeks since completion, some colors of a few fish have migrated beyond the black outlines. Blowout, they call it. I’m told it sometimes happens on old, damaged skin like mine. It’s permanent. At first I was disappointed – I really liked how sharp the tattoo looked those first few days. But tattoos, like life, are sometimes imperfect. Things sometimes look blurry.

I guess that’s part of the story, the one the voice assured me would make sense. On the simplest level, my tattoo reminds me of a happy place where we created family memories and traditions, where we found calm in the storm. On a deeper level, my tattoo is a way to carry the three most important people in my life with me. It reminds me that the obstacle on the path becomes the path, that wherever the current takes us, my husband and I have learned how to swim together.