Growing Tattoos

The invitation to appear on Ellen should be coming any day now.

We’ll walk on set, greeted by Isaiah Mustafa and all of the Old Spice team.

Ellen, Isaiah, and the man holding a giant cardboard check will gift us with a lifetime supply of deodorant and a $50,000 college scholarship for our gifted 4 year old.

Let me start from the beginning.

Here are the facts:

1. My husband puts on deodorant every morning. (It’s one of the main reasons I married him.)
2. My husband has a Hebrew word tattooed on the inside of his arm.

The 4 year old, Hutton, thinks there is a correlation between the two, and has been applying Old Spice for months trying to grow his own tattoo.

It’s genius, really.

And it wasn’t until Thursday of last week that I had my own stroke of genius:

I would help his tattoo grow.

Armed with a Sharpie and an iPhone flashlight, I snuck into his room late at night, Love You Forever style, and completed the first installment.

In the morning, I asked about it.

me: Wait…what is that on your arm?

him: It’s a bandaid.

me: No, the other thing.

him: It’s peanut butter from breakfast.

me: No, that black thing.

him: It’s a boo boo from the trampoline.

me: No, the other black thing.

And then he saw it. He squinted at it, perplexed, his thoughts hamster-wheeling at full speed.

“I think it’s….it kinda looks like…is that….did I just…..”

As recognition washed over him, so did uncontainable laughter.

He sprinted downstairs for immediate, liberal re-application of deodorant because IT. WAS. WORKING.

He was growing his very own tattoo.

Every day, for the next 4 days, this was our schedule:

I would sneak in at night while he slept and add to the tattoo,

(sometimes this went swimmingly, sometimes it did not)

and he would wake up and check it’s progress first thing in the morning.

He’d see growth, run to show his brothers, then start the process all over again.

Two nights ago we completed the tattoo.

All 4 letters were inked on. The word “redeemed”, in Hebrew.

(Hopefully. For all we monolinguals know, it could also mean “bacon”.)

Taylor is in a busy season at work so Hutton hasn’t gotten to see much of him, though Taylor has been fully invested in this, often holding the flashlight at night while I worked.

So when Taylor walked in from work on Monday night, Hutton ran up and said:

“DADDY, I HAVE SOMEPIN TO SHOW YOU.

*switches to Cool Guy Voice, rolls up his shirt sleeve*

I growed 4 letters, just like you.”

If we could bottle his pride in that moment and offer it for public consumption, if we could create a serum out of his joy and inject it into every human on earth, it’d be heaven. A world full of actual heaven.

There are moments as a parent that are so precious and perfect, you wonder if you’ve hit the pinnacle. Like, “That’s it! We’ve peaked.”

The Growing Tattoo might have been our peak, and I’m totally fine with that.

Because our kid grew a tattoo. With deodorant.

It was one of our family’s finest hours.

Now, we watch it fade as we remind our little man that, “Tattoos don’t really stick for long until you’re older.”

But they sure are awesome in the meantime.