What's Pins Got to Do With It?

My mood over the past few days has been rather glum. The latter part of May is sometimes a bit rocky for me. There are anniversaries for a couple of very difficult events that occurred around Memorial Day weekends in the past and they pop up and cause me to feel a bit sluggish and slow. I’ve grown accustomed to my annual moody disposition as summer inches forward, but I also have enough life experience to know that the bad mood won’t last. It never does. Sometimes, it might hang on for two or three days, but rarely does it last longer than a week. Eventually, whether it’s a few hours or a few days, it will pass on its own and things will be fine again. And other times, like this year, something will happen to give me a little kick and make me smile.

Yesterday, despite the unseasonably cold weather, the threat of dark storm clouds during the afternoon and the fact that I had a dental appointment, was a good day. At the corner of East 89th Street and Madison Avenue, I found a safety pin lying on the sidewalk. It was slightly bent, probably from being stepped on. And if you look closely enough, there’s a hint of rust around one of the curved edges. Most people walked by and never noticed it. Others, if they had noticed, probably didn’t consider stopping for it. After all, who wants an old, dirty safety pin? I stopped, as I always do when coming across a lost pin, smiled, and put it in my pocket. It's a ritual I repeat often.

I had a partner who died a number of years ago. Dan was not a superstitious person, except for two things he believed. When he turned the radio on in the morning, if the first thing he heard was a Bruce Springsteen song, it meant he was going to experience a really good day. I never understood exactly why Springsteen=Good Day, but it made Dan happy when he’d turn on the radio and there was Bruce. The other superstition came from an old nursery rhyme: "See a pin, pick it up and all the day you'll have good luck."

Dan was always finding pins, picking them up and pinning them into the front of his shirts and jackets. There'd be times he'd be wearing a new shirt for the first time, and he'd stick in some found pin, poking holes through the shirt pocket because it was “lucky” although it didn’t seem too lucky for the shirt. When doing the laundry, Dan’s shirts always had to be checked first to avoid a pin coming loose in the washing machine by ripping a small hole in the fabric. These found pins eventually made it into the top drawer of his dresser. In the seven years we had together, it was amazing how many pins he placed there.

In the 10 years since Dan died, I can't even begin to remember how many times I've found pins. I’ve found them on streets, on the floor inside closets, on windowsills and once, somehow, in my kitchen sink. And there are times, like yesterday, when they don't feel like just pins, they feel more like messages. Now, maybe interpreting them as messages is just a way of making myself feel better when I need a boost, but the timing of these pin sightings sometimes feels a bit too coincidental. I have found pins lying on the street on my and Dan's anniversary. A couple years ago, I found a pin on the passenger seat in my car on my birthday and I swear it had not been there the day before. I have found pins at times when I was doubting myself and I've found pins when something unexpectedly great happens. And sometimes, often, I find pins on perfectly ordinary days as I'm walking along.

A few years ago, about two weeks after buying the house I live in now, I was taking the dog for a walk and questioning how wise it had been to purchase the property. Doubts kept popping up into my head. Could I afford it? Would the aging roof cave in on me one night in my sleep? What if the pipes burst? Had I made a mistake? As I walked and worried, I saw a glint of silver and came upon a pile of forty to fifty safety pins lying there on the sidewalk. Coincidence? Maybe. But I like to think not. I preferred to think of it as a message that everything was going to be fine.

Yesterday, as I picked up the safety pin from the sidewalk and dropped it into my pocket, I got another reminder of just how lucky I am. And because of one dented safety pin and all the good memories it brought along with it, my annual glum mood has officially ended for May, 2008.