“Is that a tattoo on your arm?”
At first, thirteen-year-old Kate Strand didn’t hear the question, because she was too mesmerized by the colorful clouds billowing outside the plane window. The summer sun was setting while the aircraft gained altitude, leaving purplish blues and creamy oranges shimmering across the sky.
The young woman sitting next to Kate repeated her question. “Scuse me, I don’t mean to be rude, but is that a tattoo on your arm?”
Startled out of her cloud daydream, Kate turned to the woman in confusion. Then she realized that her shirt sleeve was up, exposing her arm. Quickly she pulled her sleeve down while muttering that it was a birthmark.
“A birthmark!” her seatmate echoed. “Bloody hell, that’s amazing, that is. I did think you were too young to have a tattoo, but a birthmark!! That is the most unusual birthmark I have ever seen.”
Kate looked at her with interest, wondering if she was a birthmark expert. It sounded as if she had seen hundreds of them.
And, as it turned out, she had.
“I’m Tia,” she said to Kate, “and pardon me for commenting on your lovely little skin picture, but I’m a tattoo artist, and I see all kinds of things on people’s skin, but I’ve never seen anything like that.” She grinned at Kate, revealing a set of perfect white teeth which gleamed against her dark skin. “I live and work in London, so I’ve seen loads of skin tags, rashes, warts, and boils,” she explained. “I once had a man with so many skin tags it looked like he had a map of Africa on his back.”
Shaking her head, she told Kate that she tried to convince the man to rid himself of the tags instead of outlining them with a tattoo. “But no, he was proud of those ugly little skin humps on his back. Thought it was a treasure map, and I couldn’t convince him otherwise.”
She laughed easily, and Kate laughed too but averted her eyes to keep from looking directly at Tia. The young woman noticed Kate’s shyness, so she kept talking.
“Anyway, I’ve also seen a ton of birthmarks as a tat artist, but nothing like this. Nothing comes close.” She then went through a lengthy list of the variety of birthmark colors, including brown, creamy brown, strawberry, and red, as the most common.
Next, she described the most usual and unusual shapes that she had seen, crescent moons, angel bites, and a few stars.
“Those angel bites are just a bit of blood vessels close to the surface. I saw one with a star and an arrow,” she said. “But I have never seen a birthmark that is more like a painting. Your mark has so much detail. It is amazing. Do you mind if I have a closer look?”
When Kate shook her head no, indicating that she did not mind, Tia quickly fished a small magnifying glass out of her pocketbook and pulled Kate’s arm closer for examination.”Look at this — the ocean waves look like they have seafoam on them — what extraordinary detail,” Tia exclaimed excitedly. She looked up at Kate, saying, “I know that many people say seafoam is only on the shore and the waves have white caps, but I’m telling you – this is seafoam.”
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