safety: (noun) the condition of being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk, or injury; [as a modifier] denoting something designed to prevent injury or damage
safe: (adjective) protected from or not exposed to danger or risk, not likely to be harmed or lost; not likely to cause or lead to harm or injury; not involving danger or risk; of a place, affording security or protection; often derogatory, cautious and unenterprising; based on good reasons or evidence and not likely to be proved wrong; uninjured, with no harm done
Origin: Middle English (as an adjective): from Old French sauf, from Latin salvus 'uninjured'. The noun is from the verb SAVE, later assimilated to the adjectival form.
http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/safety
http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/safe?q=safe
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Remembering
Easter morning we'd wake, head down the stairs just as we'd do at Christmas, but rather than half-eaten Santa cookies, we'd find bunny prints on a piece of paper beside the five or so baskets on each side of the table...Five for my brother and five for me, with one, large family basket in the center of the table. Every holiday--every Easter--was bigger...more baskets, filled with more candy, more stuffed animals, more of everything (the stuffed animals were bought in duplicate for fairness, and stored, wrapped individually in twisty-tied shopping bags inside the cedar chest on the far side of my bedroom).
For meals, breakfast and dinner, there was more of everything too. A trip to the local bakery the day or two before, would create a tower of sweet things: bunny cupcakes, seasonal cookies, and strange pastries part of other people's traditions...if it was someone's tradition, it was our tradition. We hijacked other traditions. Dinner was ham, pineapple stuffing, mac & cheese casserole, some corn-based concoction, rolls with the lamb-shaped butter, and other assorted sides. Dessert involved all of the above mentioned items, plus the homemade peanut butter and coconut cream eggs, the homemade chocolates, and whatever else was around. There was always too much and it was never enough.
There'd be hyacinth candles burning, hyacinth flowers sitting in pastel wrapping, Easter decor everywhere. One my mother's Jewish friends from nursing school (this IS how Mom referred to her)came to visit just after we'd ceremoniously unpacked the stuffed animals and lined them up on the fireplace mantle and wherever else they'd fit, and this friend asked if she should expect a bunny to pop out of the oven. That is just how much Easter there was.
On Easter, though, I looked for two things: my Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs (I may or may not have stolen them out of the other baskets and burried them under the Easter grass in mine) and, most importantly, the handful of new books I'd receive in my baskets. They were always classics (Kipling, Twain, Stevenson, Poe, Alcott, Bronte, etc.). I'd retreat with those books, the newness of them and their promise of safe 'lost' and I had a way to be alone...to be safe.
Safety has always been solitary.
Thinking
Safety (the noun, the THING) is established by thinking and feeling through a sensually based moment in which what you think and feel matches up with what you see, what you touch, what you smell, what you hear, and what you taste. The balance--the match-up--can occur in a second, or over a period of time. Slight-seeming shifts send safety spiraling towards danger and vulnerability-- again occurring within a second, or over a period of time. Through can be direct or indirect. Through is through regardless. What you think or feel through seeing, touching, smelling, hearing, or tasting can be thrown out of balance when any of those senses reattaches historic (recent or more distant past) perception onto a thought or feeling, leaving safety (the thing) illusive and manifesting somewhere along an 'I remember' spectrum stretching from 'something's off' to full-blown anxiety, panic, and beyond. Establishing safety, then, is contingent on collecting and recognizing, sometimes replacing but ultimately balancing out, the perceptions responsible for tipping us out of balance.
Feeling
Safe (the adjective pointing towards the thing) taps and ducks, taps and ducks, playing, leading me to identify who, what, where, when, I am safe. The safe job, the safe feeling, the safe piece of writing, the safe telling, the safe person, the safe time, the safe...and it goes on and on and on, challenging me to ask and think too many questions to manage. To come back from the questions I search for present.
In a present moment...
I see sunshine rising, first lighting the sky in color, then bathing grass pushing sporadic green blades through the brown and I recall walking, alone, safely towards the creek far beyond my Mom-Mom's house. Through the soggy, mushy-brown earth leading up to the spot that was all mine. A safe spot.
I touch the outer edge of this ceramic mug, warming between my hands as I wrap my finger around simply for the warmth.
I smell that coffee, breathing its oils and steam into the air yet untouched by breakfast.
I hear birds as though I'd never heard them before, squeaking out a language that, in moments of quiet, seems so much more capable of expressing joy and pain than words or tears.
I taste that piece of Easter chocolate that, in all of its glorious, silky-sweet goodness, has yet to reach my lips.
I remember other Easters...ones that didn't feel safe, but rather chaotic, dysfunctional, hurried, and hurting, and sometimes, that taste of chocolate, coupled with an event, tastes of chaos and sadness.
Sometimes playing with words though--reading words--like I am this morning, brings back my solitary safety...one that smells of old books.
