Two matching black and grey tattoos of a bare tree with the words Sister to sister on the calves of two people, shown side by side.

Matching sister family tree tattoos on calves

Lettering · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

Two matching tattoos of a bare, twisted tree with roots sit on the lower legs of two people, each with a handwritten quote set in the curve of the branches. The linework is dark and fairly fine, with soft grey shading on the trunk and branches. The two calves are photographed side by side against a grey carpet, with the designs placed at the same height for a matched pair.

Lettering Calf Tree Bare tree Sister Quote Handwriting Root Matching tattoo

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The surveyor wanted the sycamore down before the sale of Gull Rock House could go through, so Maud and Irene stood on the wet lawn with a flask of stewed tea between them and argued about whether a dead tree could still count as family. The sycamore had been bent flat by sixty years of sea wind. Its branches reached inland like cracked fingers, and its roots gripped the cliff edge as if they expected to be pulled off it at any moment.

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On the trunk, at about the height of Maud's shoulder, someone had carved names with a penknife. Grandad had cut his own first, then Nan's, then their mother's, then Aunt Dot's, each letter a little deeper than the one before. Below Dot's name the bark was smooth. Dot had left the rest of the trunk for them, she always said, in the same tone she used for the boarding house accounts and the gas meter.

Dot had also said, every Sunday for thirty years, that the pair of them were a couple of nuts off the family tree. She said it when they came up from Leeds with muddy wellies and a box of conkers they had no use for. She said it when Irene dyed her hair green and when Maud crashed the borrowed car into the bins. Irene picked a winged seed key from the wet grass and turned it between her finger and thumb. "She meant it kindly," she said. "Mostly."

Maud took the penknife from her coat pocket, the same one Grandad had used, and knelt in the cold grass. Irene watched her cut two small letters beneath Dot's name, uneven and a bit too deep. The surveyor could fetch his saw in the morning. Irene read the letters aloud, then laughed until she had to sit down on the wet step beside her sister. "That's two nuts, then," she said, and went in to put the kettle on.