Traditional style rose tattoo in red and yellow with green leaves and a pale banner reading MOM, shown on skin.

Rose with MOM banner

Traditional · Colour · Photo

A full-colour rose with red, orange and yellow petals sits above a pale banner with the word MOM in black lettering. Green leaves and stems surround the base of the rose. Bold black outlines and solid colour fills give the design a classic flash look, photographed straight on against plain skin.

Traditional Rose Banner Leaves Mom Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rope burns your palm before the trawler clears the harbour wall, and by the time you have the wet line coiled, your mother is a grey coat on the quay with one arm raised, not waving so much as holding something in place. Behind you the Mary Kettle slaps against the swell. Her name is painted on the transom in red and gold, and beneath it sits the rose, with the banner curling under it in the same lettering Ruddock used on every boat he ever built in Gullhaven.

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He painted it himself the winter she was launched. He said a boat needs something on her that won't bend when the weather does. He got the middle letters wrong at first, the O too round and squat like a dropped coin, and you laughed at him until he threatened to paint your name on the banner instead. You never told him the O was the part you liked best. It looked like someone had pressed it with a thumb to make sure it was real.

Three days out the glass drops and the net snags on something that isn't a fish. You're on the winch when the deck tilts and the sea comes over the rail white and furious, and for one long second all you can see is that red rose, bright against the spray, while the cold closes over your boots. Then the boat shudders up again and you are still breathing, still holding the line, still hers.

When you come back into harbour the quay is empty except for her, sleeves pushed past the elbow, a pot of paint at her feet. She has been sanding the transom. Under the banner she has added one small word in fresh black letters, and when you read it on the wet wood you have to stop walking. She has fixed the O. It is still a little too round, and she has left it that way.