Since shortly after my dad passed away, I have been thinking about a way to memorialize him. I wanted it to be something that presented our relationship and the things that we enjoyed doing together. I wanted it to be something that anyone who knew him would look at it and go, "That makes me think of your Daddy." I went through a few ideas. I discarded a lot of them. I had decided on a screw driver. I wanted it to look like one of his old Craftsman screw drivers. For most of my life, I was sure he had the tools needed to fix anything in the world in that red box. I checked with my tattoo shop, and my regular artists' books were closed. I inquired about seeing one of the other artists because all of them there are very talented. None were interested in doing the piece for me.
A year or so later, I was visiting with a friend and admired his new tattoo. And then a few months after that saw another friend with a tattoo from the same artist. I took a chance and reached out with my ideas to see if she might be interested in doing the piece for me. She was. I sent some inspiration artwork I had found on Instagram (The artist Soosh does amazing artwork of moms and dads with their children) along with some photos of me and my dad and a few stories about our relationship. My one request was that the screwdriver and toolbox be red and that it should be placed somewhere that I could always see it.
She took all of that inspiration and made the idea so much better than I had dreamed. The father really looks like my father, and little girl looks like me as a kid. The number of times we were stretched out on the living room floor with all sorts of parts strewn around us reading directions on how to put together a new piece of furniture or fixing something that was broken in the house or on the car. I was his helper in every project that he'd let me be involved in (and that was a yes to most). Some of my best memories are me being covered to the elbow in grease from working on a car or handing the appropriate tools to my dad as he called for them surgical nurse style.
It makes me happy that I can look down at any time and see the representation of so many memories.
