Pins in the Carpet
There was ugly green carpet covering the floor at my Nana's house in Miami Lakes. And if you walked around barefoot, you would eventually—painfully—find a straight pin with your toe.
Because Nana was a lifelong seamstress, and clumsiness runs in our family, stray pins were always becoming lost and lodging themselves in the wild and wooly carpet fibers. Each time I stepped on one it was a tiny stab of surprise and betrayal.
But still I always ran around barefoot. We all did. It was Nana's house.
I'd come in from the pool smelling of chlorine and wrapped in nubby peach towels to devour bowls of ice cream and watch Wheel of Fortune. Nana yelled answers from the kitchen, while she cooked and talked on the phone, the extra long cord wound round and round as she moved—stove to sink fridge and back again.
My brothers and I walked back from the lake to the air conditioned refuge of Nana's house, bare feet slapping against the scalding sidewalk. We drug sand and crabgrass into the den and sat next to Nana on the piano bench as she played her favorite hymns. Her knobby fingers skipped across the keys and she sang with her eyes closed and her smile wide. She didn't need the sheet music.
We always walked barefoot through that ugly olive green shag, vulnerable to the inevitable straight pin. Accepting the risk. Comfortable with it.
When we lost Nana to a freak accident, she was old—but still too much young to be gone from us. It felt like a stab of betrayal. Love feels that way. Like being vulnerable.
That olive carpet has long since been rolled up and tossed out, along with all its straight pins. Someone probably sighed "thank goodness" as it was hauled away. The house in Miami Lakes was sold and remodeled years ago, the phone with the extra-long cord ripped down.
But I still remember what it feels like to be there. To splash in the pool, to be wrapped in the towel and in Nana's arms. To see her throw her head back in laughter and hear the sounds of the hymns float through the house. To feel the toe stab.
Risking love because as a child I didn't know any better. Because it's worth it.
May we all be children.