Fasten your safety pins!

"It was a day a duck could love. For that matter the week was a duck's paradise. Dressed for the season in my long skirt, paisley wool shawl, and tea cozy hat with the red hibiscus over my left ear my feet splashed in puddles...

The wind began to dance with me as I lifted my nose and sniffed from beneath the felt hat now much soaked through with rain. No fairies. But, a large copper pin about the size of a butterfly dropped from the cherry red awning above me and landed on my right shoe. A pin. A safety pin. "My Ma,"I said to myself. Besides being famous for carrying a flashlight my mother always wore at least one but more often a couple safety pins. Just in case. Long before it was punk fashion, safety pins are a talisman of security hard-wired in my DNA like knowing how to make something out of nothing. I fondled the pin and felt the distance of time between us compress... The Safety Pin Cafe

Years ago, and not far away, we lived in the woods at the end of a road called Forest Lane. New to this island on occupied Coast Salish People's land, this wooded place would become a sanctuary and a learning place, for many years. Pete and I were still very new to learning to live with chronic illness. We'd built a home on wheels with the idea we could move if the physical environment -- other peoples' choices, mostly, or elemental/seasonal changes -- created more burden for me.

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"Your way of thinking is greatly influenced by the conditions in your environment. In general, you prefer to be alone and away from the stress in your surroundings, for your daily contact with others always seems to bring some kind of trouble in one way or another." - Mercury Conjunct Saturn-Ascendent Midpoint

Living in small spaces compresses the challenges of being human (with or without illness). It was during these first years of learning to respond and adapt that I found the remedy of myth and the writing of medicine stories. "The Safety Pin Cafe" was one of the first of these medicine stories. Today, the motivation I feel to return to that first story comes from a friend's message. An email responding to my query. He and his wife were in the process of moving. I asked how the move was going.

My friend's response, "No, it didn't work out. (Will tell you about it when I see you.) So status quo. Fasten your safety pins!"

When we were new to this place, living our new-to-us wagon life, in the woods, I found a safety pin on the floor of the post office in town. My mother was a woman truly connected with safety pins. Not unlike many mothers of her era and her ilk, my Ma was a practical and transformative wahine. A woman not prone to fancy, she was a woman many loved because she had an internal magic to her. Traveling across the thresholds of time, my mother dropped that safety pin for me one winter when my resilience and imagination were worn through. I picked it up, pinned it to my hoodie and used it to inspire the writing of medicine. It was that friend whose email reached me this morning who published the story of The Safety Pin Cafe in installments on his platform called drewslist.

His message "Fasten your safety pins!" fuels me anew, our journeys are real life examples that this is no time to give up. Spring is here, again. Fruit trees are filled with blossoms, Alder begins to set her dangling lanterns of pollen-ripe promises, litters of baby rabbits join the company of yearlings and oldsters, Daffodil's bright yellow faces perk from their long lean green necks, Nettles reach out of that year's leave compost. I look for the first sighting of Dandelions yet to come; it may be a little too soon, with too little bright sun yet. But there is a Dandelion that was pinned safely onto the pages of my blog The Safety Pin Cafe one November day in 2016.

It's important to acknowledge the messages, connections and patterns that fuel the best magic, and common strength of hope and safety tangible in our art of living. Common magic is as the safety pin holds one thing to another ... an unhinged fabric (of life) holds together in no fancy or permanent fashion. Just as there are no promises cement or a stock portfolio will withstand unpredictable forces; or walling out folks who live rough and 'panhandle' with judgement fed on 'privilege' to keep your quarter slice of the pie.

My astrologer said the other day, "Helping out when you can, but don't, is in vogue." So many could help, but don't is what she was saying. It doesn't take much to help out, and that's what this post is all about. When I wrote the original tale, I was tapping into the spirit of spirit and helping that is so much of what my Ma was, and is, all about. She was Pisces. Both her Sun and Moon were in the watery-sign when she was born. We have an affinity for each other. I was born in the watery elemental sign of the zodiac just before her. We get each other!

I realize I'm writing as a form of Ancestor Worship, a way to recognize and perpetuate the qualities of my Ma that I love, and hope my Ancestors present and future will perpetuate. Helping out when you can, and do. Fastening a safety pin for yourself is a small and simple form of holding the whole of your world. And, in the process you hold space for life to keep on. Greed is rarely found in the company of the safety pin. Just for fun, check with the closest millionaire in your neighbor.

The thing is The Safety Pin Cafe began as a place with inter-species relationships found common ground. Ducks, little kittens, a Goddess, fairy women, a border witch and a Silver-haired Raven create a story in a cafe in my town. The imagination allowed magic to visit and a faceless woman was given the company of many who could, and did, help. The practice is worth sharing, again.

Look for the practice of 'fastening your safety pins' to reconnect to that place of common magic. To make that possible we need to make it possible for more folks like me to have access to you. "I'm Sick of Inaccessibility. Here's How You Can Make Your Event More Accessible to People with Chronic Illness" by Katie Tastrom
describes the process of making a place of truly revolutionary and inclusive. Read this first, and then take hold of a safety pin, open it up and take the steps to make your next event safe for me, and my community.

What do you say? Ready to fasten your safety pins?

 

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