No Tattoos on Tuesday: A Father’s Vigil at the Surgeon’s Gate

Tuesday usually leaves a mark.
Sometimes ink. Sometimes metaphor.
But this one? This one came with no tattoos—just the quiet gravity of a surgical scheduling sheet and the weight of a child’s future in fluorescent light.

I spent most of the day in a doctor’s office, flanked by sterile walls and the soft hum of machines that speak in beeps and blinks. My kiddo sat beside me, brave in ways that defy comic panels. No cape, no mask—just the raw courage of showing up.

We weren’t battling monsters, but we were mapping the terrain of incisions, timelines, and recovery plans. The surgeon spoke in measured tones, drawing diagrams like a cartographer of flesh. I nodded, asked questions, took notes. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I imagined the whole thing as a Balkan folktale: the child who must pass through the Gate of Steel, guarded by the Three Specialists, each with their own riddle.

There was no time for tattoos.
No time for mythic adornment.
But the day left its mark anyway.

Not on skin—but on story.

I walked out of that office with a new kind of ink: invisible, indelible, etched into the myth of fatherhood. The kind that doesn’t show up in selfies but lives in the quiet resolve of being there, fully, when it counts.

So no tattoos on Tuesday.
Just a vigil.
Just love.
Just the kind of myth that doesn’t need a needle to be permanent.