Stomp

By Rick Crawford, republished from MeZine.net, 2002

OUCHITY OUCH OUCH OUCH

Growing up, I spent much of my summers at my family's cottage in a small village on Cape Cod.

Now, anyone who has spent time on the Cape should be suspicious of someone with a green, lush, well-groomed lawn: The climate and all of the salt and sand simply don't permit this sort of thing. Unless you've got an inordinate amount of time and money. And maybe a mental imbalance.

Most lawns, my family's included, are a paler shade of green than seen in a typical suburb. Ours was also covered with pine needles and sharp, thorny shards of bark fallen from the scrubby pines that grow all over the Cape, turning the lawn into a minefield for bare feet.

My brother and my sister and I could often be seen in a kind of clumsy dance on the lawn, on our way to the beach or the hammock. We would tiptoe and dance our way across the lawn, trying to hop lightly between small tufts of grass that were bare of anything sharp, trying to save our feet from cuts and scrapes.

Then our father taught us something amazing. If you stomped your feet on the ground as you walked, the thorns wouldn't bother you. The daintier you tried to walk, the worse the pain.

Could this be? Wouldn't stomping just cause the thorns to dig deeper into our feet?

For reasons I don't quite understand, the answer is and was no. Stomping on the ground is the best way to walk on that lawn, as if all those sharp things on the ground can sense your defiance.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've thought about that quite a bit. Like so many others, I've been afraid to ride the subway and train to work, afraid to fly, afraid of all the unseen evil that I never knew existed until about 8:50 AM on September 11, 2001. And not just afraid. There were times in those first few days that I was almost paralyzed with sadness.

I'm trying to take the lesson my father taught me years ago at our quiet home on the Cape and apply it here. Against my instincts, I am trying to be defiant in the midst of all of the fear. I will not tiptoe to work in the morning. I will not try to avoid every imaginable threat that may lie before me, and before us all.

I will stomp.