Letter No. 5
Old Suitcase
A few tattoos
I have a few tattoos.
My whole left arm, my left chest, halfway down my back, and most of my right calf. A few.
I came to this fairly late. I was past forty when I got my first tattoo, and in my early fifties when I became a father. Apparently I was saving permanent commitments for later in life.
They tell you that once you get one tattoo, you’re going to get a whole shitload of them.
Spot on in my case.
The first was on my left shoulder. I’d come back from Costa Rica with a photograph I’d taken where I’d been surfing with my friends Todd and Sarah. A wave, a sunset, islands on the horizon. One of those places you leave feeling a little different from when you arrived.
I took the picture to a tattoo artist in Sarasota, Nate Greco, and basically said, “Do something like this.”
Nate has done every tattoo I’ve gotten since. Somewhere along the way, that one picture became a collection.
Stickers on a suitcase
When somebody asks about my tattoos, I tell them I’m like an old suitcase.
You know the ones. Battered, traveled, covered in stickers from places their owners had been.
I put my stickers on my body.
Oahu. Sedona. Manuel Antonio. Tulum. Ocracoke.
Each one comes with a story. Where I was. Who I was with. What happened there that stayed with me.
Some of those places changed the direction of my life. I left a different person from the one who’d arrived. And I carried a little of that place with me when I went.
Some tattoos went on while the trip was still fresh. Others came years later, when I realized how much of that place I was still carrying around.
Dad said go get some crabs
Ocracoke was one of those.
We spent two weeks there most summers when I was a kid. A little island off the Outer Banks of North Carolina, with wild horses, giant mosquitoes, hurricanes, fishing, and more sea life than I knew what to do with. My parents pretty much let us loose.
It was a small friggin’ island, right? How the hell were we supposed to get lost?
We were always exploring. One time, we were on the boat approaching neighboring Portsmouth Island. It was totally uninhabited. There were crabs everywhere, and Dad told me to go get some.
We didn’t have a net. We did have a scrub brush.
So I grabbed it, dove off the front of the boat, and swam to shore.
I brushed the crabs up onto the shore, kept the males, threw the females back, and we brought home several dozen for a big crab bake.
Apparently a scrub brush qualified as fishing equipment.
We also went to story nights and listened to the old ghost stories about Blackbeard the pirate. Years later, Queen Anne’s Revenge took up most of my right calf. Every time I look at that ship, there’s a little of that boy running around Ocracoke in it.
Bring a picture. Sit still.
Sedona became mountains on my arm. Tulum became the ruins above the cliffs, a fishing boat out on the water, clouds and lightning running across my chest toward my back.
Tulum was where Melissa and I shared a life, and where Nikko was conceived. After he was born, I added his name above the clock on my forearm. I wanted the lettering to look like something written on an old treasure map, fitting in with the maps already there.
Melissa has his birth date and time on her arm. She also has a snake from a period when she was going through her own transformation. Apparently, collecting these memories runs in the family.
Putting them there hurts like hell.
I’d bring Nate photos and ideas, and we’d talk about what they meant and how the new piece would fit with everything else. Then I’d sit there for three to five hours while he did it.
At first, you wince. By hour four, when he starts another pass of shading, you’re about ready to jump through the fucking ceiling.
By then, you’ve had plenty of time to reconsider your artistic vision.
Four o’clock
When I look over my own suitcase, the clock is the one that ties it all together.
Different places. Different versions of me. Each one takes me back to a time I’m grateful for: a summer with my family, a trip that changed me, the beginning of a life with Melissa and Nikko.
They’re all times of my life. And the clock reminds me what those times are worth.
My father had kept it for decades after taking it from a ship when it was decommissioned. It had stopped running, with the hands at four o’clock.
Supposedly that was the time it had been removed from the ship. Could somebody have moved the hands in all those years? Who knows. Four was where they were when I got hold of it, and four is where they are on my arm.
Without Dad knowing, I took the clock back to Sarasota and brought it to a watchmaker. He thought he could get it running again.
A couple of weeks later, I gave it back to my father for his eightieth birthday. Working.
When Dad passed, the clock came back to me. We still have it here at the house in Puerto Rico.
Right in front of my face
The tattoo is about five inches wide, right in the middle of my left forearm. When I’m sitting at my desk, it’s the only tattoo that is literally staring me right in the face.
And it’s probably the thing that I look past the most.
As Dad got older, it reminded me to take the opportunities to spend time with him. Time is the most precious thing I’ve got. And I can burn through a hell of a lot of it working, chasing money, planning what’s next.
Now I sit at my desk with that reminder in front of me, and his grandson’s name just above it.
And somehow, I still convince myself there’s one more thing I need to figure out before I can stop.
Then Nikko comes down to my office. He’s got something new—a pop gun, whatever it is—and he wants to show Poppy.
He knows where to find me. I’m working. My head’s up my ass, deep in worrying about shit that really doesn’t matter.
And there’s my boy, wanting to share something with me.
That’s when I need to put the work down, greet him with a smile, share in his excitement, and give him some time.
I know how much those summers with my dad mean to me now. I can tell you about a scrub brush and a pile of crabs from fifty years ago. I put an entire pirate ship on my leg because of those memories.
Nikko is making his now.
Maybe someday he’ll have his own stickers. Rincón. St. Petersburg. Leon. Manzanillo. Places we’ve been together. And places he’ll go without me. Maybe he’ll never get a tattoo at all.
I’ve spent hours sitting in a chair, paying somebody to make sure I never forget mine. Now I need to pay attention to the moments he’ll remember.
Melissa gets it. She makes time for the people she loves and builds her life around being present with them.
I’m the knucklehead who put a clock in the middle of his fucking arm and still needs reminding.
At this point, the thing needs arms of its own so it can reach up, smack me in the head, and say:
“Hey, father of the year. Your kid’s right here.”
That’s what I’m working on. Being present for the moments while they’re happening.
I’ve got plenty of reminders of where I’ve been. I want to get better at being where I am.
— Rob