Essay: Needlework with Nana

My nana, Ann Haber, has always been her own woman. At age 83, she lives in an isolated Northern Ontario community. Twenty-five years ago she and my papa -- her husband -- retired there, to a house that has always been our family's cottage. Papa passed away, but Nana still lives there, feeding the wild animals and stoking the wood stove in the winter.

Idolizing Nana
When I was growing up, our family spent many vacations at the cottage, and Nana was always the life of the party. She was always the first person to jump into the river when it still had ice on it. She'd hop on a snowmobile and go on treks in the bush. Her granddaughters -- myself included -- hold her up on a pedestal.So when she decided that the adult women in my family (my sister Stephanie and I, my cousins Lisa and Samantha, and my aunt Janice) should all get tattoos, we were only partly surprised. It was July 2008 and we were at our annual family barbecue. Months earlier, Nana had been diagnosed with breast cancer and, thankfully, treated successfully. The women in our family told Nana we wanted to do something to pay tribute to her. That's when she came up with the tattoo idea.

The perfect symbol
In our cottage there's a big oak hutch behind the kitchen table. It holds a tea set with a pretty floral pattern that has been in our family since 1936. One day, a few months after our barbecue, it hit us. We would use the pattern on the china as our tattoo design -- a perfect image to represent Nana's life and our cottage.

Time passed and I forgot about the plan for a while. One day Nana called me up and announced, "I want to get on with this tattoo business." She had decided we would get them for Mother's Day during a girls' weekend at the cottage. Suddenly, I began to panic, thinking of needles, sterilization and pain. What seemed like such a far-off plan was becoming reality.

Click to continue to find out what happened when the big day rolled around...

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