Disclaimer: This is a swimming post with no swimming in it because I got a tattoo last week and now have to stay out of the water for at least two weeks while it heals. To use some old-school Kiwi vernacular, I’m beached as!
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I got my first tattoo 28 years ago, in 1996. I was 18, flatting in Auckland, and enjoying my adult freedoms. I chose a small black cat (the design was copied from a bemused colleague’s keyring) on my hip, so I wouldn’t see it too often and I figured cats were generic enough that I wouldn’t regret it. It cost $40. I’m glad I didn’t get a boy’s name or band name and it’s been a harmless addition. I don’t regret it one bit. While its outline is slightly fuzzy now, it’s more or less kept its shape.
Last year, I started to think about getting another one. Tattoos have come more into their own recently. I remember when job interview advice included covering any tattoos as they were a sign of a shameful past, but now everyone seems to have them on proud display and they can be very beautiful. While snakes, tigers and skulls are still an option, it’s becoming more common to see native birds and flowers – a sign of commitment to conservation, or just a love of beautiful things?
I also see other people in their togs a lot and there are plenty of tattoos on display: dotted behind shoulders, swirling down arms, stamped on calves. They look good. Each tattoo is its own story or memory: not just the picture itself, but where the person was at the time and their frame of mind. Some were on a dare, some were during a challenging time, some were markers of milestones or celebrations. Whether planned or spontaneous, everyone I know seems to be fond of their tattoos. (If you have a tattoo story, I’d love to hear it.)
While I’m being deep and reflective, I think deciding to get a tattoo right now gives me a feeling of control over my body as it continues to change through my mid-to-late 40s. Post-youth, post-having babies, pre-menopause. The tattoo is permanent, but only as permanent as I am. Which is to say, not very permanent at all.
I wanted a more meaningful design this time, one that would represent all the marine biology and swimming in my life over the past few years, but not the usual cliched octopus (no offence to octopuses). One day last year I was listening to an episode of the Deep-Sea Podcast where Thom interviewed Kerry Walton, a mollusc curator at Te Papa (Museum of NZ). At one point, Kerry casually mentioned “violet sea snails”. Violet what?! I paused, rewound, listened again, then googled.
Violet sea snails (Janthina) have beautiful purple shells and float along the sea surface by blowing bubbles. They’re widely distributed in temperate waters and sometimes their shells wash up on the beach. When I was working at Te Papa I met Kerry and was able to quiz him about Janthina. He pointed me towards some good websites and photos and gave me a container of little purple shells. From my Master’s degree I am very aware of the sensory now: they are hard, thin, shiny, textured spiral shells, made of calcium carbonate, that rattle together like tiny teeth in their plastic container. Their white centre has countershading as camouflage to the sea critters below them because they blend into the light as they float above. Clever, eh? (And one of my children is named Violet, so it seemed particularly auspicious.)
I booked in with Zoe at Shadow Gallery. I follow her on Instagram and really like her designs: lots of birds and flowers, fine line drawings, not overwhelming or intimidating.
My husband and I drove up to Greytown together (about 1.5 hours) because I wanted a support person and thought I might feel a bit shaky afterwards for driving home. I was nervous and excited, partly because I hadn’t seen the design yet – Zoe had explained that she finds people’s in-the-moment reaction is more relevant than weeks of humming and hawing over a design and overthinking it, which makes sense. When she showed me her sketch, I was happy: a sea snail blowing bubbles below the ocean surface, just as I’d asked. I’d planned for it to go behind my right shoulder but when she put the stencil on and I looked at my back in the mirror, I saw a rogue mole above it which was distracting, so we changed to the left side.
I lay face down on the bed with my top off, left bra strap pulled down, and she started the outlines. It stung a little, like a needle does on the skin, but it was okay. It reminded me of being at the dentist where there is a buzzing tool and pressure and some discomfort, but all I had to do was lie still. She changed to a thicker pen to colour in the purple shell and then shaded some of the bubbles to create a 3-D effect and that was more painful. I was getting tired and was about to ask for a break, but then it was done! Funny how you can book something months in advance and it sits in your calendar like this Big Thing and then within an hour it was over.
Here it is. It’s not tiny but then again I will only see it when my back is to a mirror, which is seldom!
Close up. I love the purple shading and the shell and bubble textures. I do wish the water surface – where I spend much of my time – had more definition but then the whole design might have become too heavy. I might get a separate waterline drawn elsewhere at some point.
Zoe was very professional and great at making sure I was comfortable while talking me through each stage. I would definitely go back to her and am already mentally planning the next one, perhaps on my arm!
I have to clean my new tat twice a day and it’s a bit tender sometimes, but the biggest challenge is definitely staying out of the water. It probably would’ve made more sense to do it in winter but I wanted it to top off my water-themed summer of swimming in Abel Tasman National Park, learning from the Fish Team at Te Papa, finishing my Master’s degree, and completing my big swim in Rotorua.
Waiting to swim again is definitely an exercise in patience, especially as the days grow shorter because it’s peak season for stunning sunrise swims. I have a list of distractions but am still counting down the days (today is Day 8). At least I have a finite number; it must be so hard for someone with an illness or injury not knowing when they can resume swimming again, and this was something I chose to do.
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I’ve been watching the new series Apples Never Fall with Sam Neill and Annette Bening and (no spoilers) there’s a scene where their four adult children are looking through old family photos and notice their mother is hardly in any of them, because she was always the photographer. I know that was true when I was growing up and it is true for me now (although smartphone selfies counteract this a bit). To generalise, I think it is usually the mums who are the ‘recorders’ of family life: taking photos, filing away hand-made cards and certificates, etc.
But it got me thinking about my swim groups and how we are very good at photographing one another because we understand the need for those photos. We are not just behind the camera, we are in the moment. Speaking for myself at least, it is partly to share ‘smugshots’ on social media if we’ve enjoyed a particularly magnificent swim – a new location, a smattering of snow on the mountains, a rose-coloured morning, a surprise encounter with marine life – but it is also to capture a precious moment of community and comradeship, to freeze it in time. A photo is a little gift for each other and for ourselves.
Recently I came across some photos taken of my local dippers’ group in the water in 2022 after the dawn blessing of the local wharf, which had just been rebuilt. It was an early spring morning, windy and overcast, and in the photos we are waist deep, cold and laughing as we bounce over the choppy foam – and I had forgotten. The photos capture a happy, carefree moment of simply being. If they hadn’t been taken, would that memory have disappeared forever? Is a moment more tangible if we photograph and share it? Or is it merely an echo, a reproduction of the past?
All these questions are floating along and bubbling in my mind like a violet sea snail while my inked skin heals and I count down the days until I can get back in the water.
In the meantime I can be sea-adjacent with my pups who are tricky to photograph, hence the blurry and lopsided image:
And look how beautiful the autumnal sunrises are this week, a fiery blur of pink, orange and purple. Another ephemeral moment, captured on camera.
I love the tattoo and this post Shona. I have fond memories of the dawn ceremony for the opening of the Seatoun Wharf and agree that it is so great to have photos of ordinary everyday swims as well as extraordinary feats and that the one who takes the most photos gets included. Wahine Waimembers are in serious discussions about a group tattoo - we have put Fifi to work to think up some cool designs. It may take a while but hopefully it will happen. Patience and anticipation! I am off to the Deserts of New Mexico soon but hopefully might get to swim in the Rio Grande. Now that would be something special!
I love the purple shells of Janthina. They very occasionally land on our coastlines and are treasured when we find them. I think your tattooist did a beautiful job in translating the image.
I'm obviously not swimming at the moment and Hell's Teeth I need a swim, I'm telling you! So I get where you are coming from. Have a good Easter anyway - cheers.