I got a tattoo on Monday. Or rather, two. A safety pin and a sewing needle on opposite sides of my right wrist. When people have asked me what it means, so far I’ve answered: “The short answer is that the safety pin is for my grandma, and the sewing needle is for me.” No one has asked me for the longer answer yet. Which is a good thing, because I don’t really know how to give it. It’s something like this:
I like safety pins. I always have. In high school, I had a jumbo size safety pin that I sometimes wore as a necklace. I don’t recall where that safety pin was from; I was always picking them up left and right. I did the same thing with an oversized paperclip: wore it on a string as a necklace to prom. I think it’s something about the commonplace object out of context that feels so absurd it’s beautiful. The common turned uncommon, the minute magnified. But after my grandma’s death, when they started showing up everywhere, well, I began to love them for a whole new set of reasons.
There’s no good reason finding safety pins in her house felt so meaningful. There was a full sewing station and a costume box, so of course there was an abundance of safety pins to accompany both. But they felt out of place that day, there on the bedspread and in the little porcelain jewelry box. Again, the common in an uncommon spot. I was looking for meaning, for signs, yes. Don’t we all go hunting for meaning when death is near, hungry for something beyond our grief? (That’s why I keep returning to this moment in writing, too.)
So when I texted an image of two safety pins in the palm of my hand, and Mom responded “‘Drive safe,’ like she’d always say," and my aunts said, “She keeps us all together” like a pin gathering fabric, I clung to them. When I ran into a friend with safety pin earrings the next day, and my aunts started finding them in the oddest places - in an unused cup, affixed to the wall, etc. - we all clung to them.
We could have found meaning elsewhere. And we did. In the chandelier shattering, in the heater breaking and the house going cold, in dreams and dreams. But we return to the safety pins. The safety pins become shorthand for something unsaid. The safety pins can be shared, and pointed to, and laughed about, in ways the other things can’t quite be.
And we like ascribing signs to loved ones, in my family. My uncle is a hummingbird, resplendent with all the colors he painted with. Now, whenever my aunt sees a hummingbird, she says hello. My cousin greets the butterflies that make her think of her dad. My mom, after one fell in the pool, already stated that she wants to come visit in dragonflies - because she likes rivers, like them, she said. We saved it in a little box, where it now sits in her closet, on display, dried and dead. My grandfather said, “I’ll visit you in books.” My great-grandfather, nickels or pennies. And my grandmother, she didn’t say, so we said for her.
So yeah, I put a safety pin on my wrist, because in my family it means grandma, and it means staying safe and close, and it means love. And a sewing needle, just for me, just because.
I love this to tears!! You darling woman. Keeping Baca close. She never would have imagined such an honor. But she loves it. As crucial and common and crafty as a pin to keep us safe and held together with ease. Thank you for writing snd sharing this. And for starting the tradition. Where should I get mine?
Bravo Cléo!