By Catherine Swindal
I got my first tattoo in the summer of 2015, a pentagon under my ribs on my right side. It was a matching tattoo I got with my sister, Teresa, who in a few months I would join at Fordham. The five sides, equaling a whole, were to honor my siblings, especially my sister Margaret who passed away in 2001. I clearly remember the whole process: Teresa and I telling our parents (who were cooler about it than I expected), picking a pentagon, printing it out at Walsh Library and finally going across the street from the University to Tuff City to get inked. While Teresa was fine without my help, I needed to hold her hand the whole time as I braced myself for what I thought would be my first and last tattoo.
Since then, I’ve gotten three more tattoos. In this column, I will tell the story of my most recent tattoo that I got just last week in Avila, Spain, on my solo trip during Holy Week.
It all starts, really, with the coolest person I know: my great uncle, Fr. Tom Royer, who lives in Canton, Illinois. At 84 years old, Fr. Tom is one of the most radical people I have ever come across. As a retired diocesan priest, he continually fights for and with marginalized communities within the U.S., especially those affected by the Trump administration’s immigration bans.
Fr. Tom’s fight with communities is not solely domestic. For the past 25 years, he has made 28 trips to El Salvador, where he has built relationships with communities in the mountainous northern region. Bringing along delegations from his parish, he not only has helped to restore community buildings and celebrated baptisms for the children in the community, but, more importantly, he has also created special friendships with the men and women of the communities.
When I was invited to go to El Salvador with him and two others last summer, I hadn’t seen Fr. Tom in seven years. But as soon as I met him again at the airport in Houston before going to El Salvador, he started talking about his passion for women’s ordination in the Catholic church five minutes into our conversation. I knew that we were going to get along just fine. It then turned out that not only is Fr. Tom radical, but also hilarious, and we had a great time exchanging jokes and stories about my dad’s side of the family. We grew very close over that week, and he now calls me a Jesuit, by which I am so honored. It’s probably the closest thing to being a Jesuit I will ever get, so I’ll take it.
Fr. Tom has a lot of stories and I heard several of them during that week we spent together in El Salvador. He came to El Salvador with a leg infection and couldn’t walk very well. Back then, he and his delegation would walk between the communities up north in the mountains, which would take several hours. During this trip, he could not walk very well down the mountain, and so his two Salvadoran friends picked him up from the shoulders and walked him down. He remembers it being dark during this time going down a large hill, and although anyone in their right mind would be scared, all he heard behind him was his other friend yelling, “¡Ánimo!” as they braced the hill. He now regards that as one of his favorite Spanish words, and though I’ve been learning Spanish for several years, that was the first time I had learned that word myself. Ánimo.
That night, I had my journal out for the first time since being there, and sitting with him, I asked him what to write down. And he said to write down two powerful statements: All is grace, and ánimo. I have kept those thoughts in my mind since he uttered them last summer. I knew somewhere deep down that either one of those sentences was going to be my next tattoo. It was only a matter of time.
Flash forward to months later, when I came to Spain. I began contemplating about who I was and what person I wanted to be; how to live to my fullest potential. I started looking in a mirror and seeing someone different, someone who I started to embrace just recently. But with this new identity came a lot of inner doubt. It also has come with, unfortunately, poor judgment of other people over the past several months that has only added to my inner fear.
One example was someone I met in a hostel in Salamanca, Spain, traveling for Holy Week. The guy seemed nice enough and we figured out that we both wanted to take a solo trip to Avila, the patron city of Saint Teresa, one of my heroes. During the trip, I disclosed to him my identity, and he ended up asking inappropriate questions breaching on sexist and homophobic. I confronted him about it as soon as I could; he told me that while he hadn’t meant to make me uncomfortable, he had always been curious about sexuality since taking one sexuality class in college. Needless to say, I was not having it. I escaped from him as soon as I could and went off by myself in Avila.
After realizing how the guy I met was definitely well-intentioned in his ignorance, I realized that I was always going to encounter people like him: people who live in their own bubble and never pop it, hurting myself and others in the process. To some, I will always be a specimen to inspect. But for me, personally, the only way to go is onward, despite these people who continually bring me down. That’s when the word “ánimo” reappeared in my mind, and I couldn’t let it go. I knew what I had to do just then: get the tattoo for which I had pined for months.
Getting this tattoo was different from my past experiences with tattoos. For my three others, I went somewhere I was comfortable, just across the street from Fordham, with a friend each time. For this tattoo, not only was I in a completely new city, but I had to speak the whole time in Spanish. I was also alone, which is significant for me, as I usually need someone there so I can squeeze his or her hand during the painful parts. But this time, I knew that I had to go at this alone. And, this is important, this tattoo is the most visible one I have so far. This was a part of the animo I needed to show myself and the world.
It’s important to note that while getting my tattoo, “Bohemian Rhapsody” played, and I sang along. Thanks for that one, Freddie.
While I came to this conclusion on my own and went alone to get it, my new ink serves as a reminder, especially for the gratitude I hold for those who have given me the ánimo I needed, and to continue to present myself as I like and as I am. There are so many people in my life who support me, just as Fr. Tom’s Salvadoran friends supported him going down a mountain. And so while I came into the tattoo parlor alone, in a city alone, after being isolated by a stranger, I knew that everyone who had ever lifted me up was with me in that tattoo parlor holding my hand. To those who give me ánimo: thank you for fighting with me, knowing that you are behind the word forever engraved into my arm.
