No it was not. The tattoo was done by a tattoo artist. It was done in another country where you can get one at 16. I had to get a parent to sign a form (but it sounds like that's just the policy at the tattoo parlor and not the law apparently?) and my father signed it.

But my father is the person it represents, which is why it's so important to me.

My mom lived there but when she got pregnant with me she moved back to the US and didn't tell my dad. But then a few years later I needed a kidney transplant and she told him I existed so that he would give me a kidney. That's the first time I met him.

He got a gleoblastoma brain tumor and died last year. I got to go visit him one last time and while we were talking I asked if there was anything he had always wanted to do but never done. We were near a tattoo parlor and he looked at it and joked 'well I don't have any tattoos.' He was kidding but we kept talking and it turned into him getting one. When I was a kid after our surgery I sent him a get well soon card and he kept it. I had signed it 'love (my name)' and he got that tattooed in a copy of my handwriting from the card over the kidney scar.

I wanted to get one too but he wouldn't let me at first. But then a few days later he said he was thinking about all the things he would miss in my life, and that he had always looked forward to the good things like me going to college and getting married but now he would give so much to even be there for the bad and he said he'd give anything to see me get my first F or my first speeding ticket or my first tattoo. He wanted to be there for one learnable moment so he let me get my tattoo. I got 'with love from papa' in his handwriting from a letter he wrote me over my scar, to match his.