Safe at home

 It started a while ago, the signs and questions about feeling safe at home. The eyes of the nurse flit between the computer screen and your face trying the register the validity of the response. When my life situation changed several years ago I answered this question gleefully. "YES," I would say with a smile, "I live alone!" Well, I don't live alone anymore and the man I live with doesn't diminish that gleeful feeling in any way. It is beautiful to experience life without threats in your own home. I suppose it's a privilege that we should all experience life that way.

Recently a life change occurred that brought new risks to my lovely home environment that I had blissfully lived without over the past several years. That is when it hit me that I didn't actually feel safe at home anymore. It was momentarily terrifying but then I started to look around me to realize that none of us are ever really safe. Feeling safe is, after all, just a feeling.

When the negative inklings began my beloved and I started to plan ways to keep alert and be notified but the threat felt closer. Then we thought about moving, but I love my home, with all its weirdness. Then a new threat surfaced and then another.

I was feeling trapped, stuck, doomed, and victimized by all the negativity swirling around our little nest. I poured over real estate offerings. I looked into moving to another country like my best friend wants to. She's convinced all hell will break loose here at any minute. I began to think the worst, obsessing over things that have not happened yet, but might.

Who imagined the Third Reich? Who assumed a Category 4 tornado would come and wipe out the town, or a thousand-year flood, or a war like that in Ukraine? Where can anyone go and actually be safe? 

Then one Saturday I was watching PBS, 'Ireland with Michael'. The storyteller was somewhere near Loch Erne. I was lost in my housework, half listening when he started talking about a Goddess who, when fleeing giants ran into the lake and drown. He went on to say that people come from miles around to pray to this Goddess at her Loch, no doubt asking for favors. I laughed at the thought of entreating any entity to aid or assist you with your quest when they supposedly lost their battle and died. Where were you when they needed someone? Clearly, they weren't safe at home either. There go your thoughts and prayers! Then I researched who she was and what is named for her, and the odds she was up against. Truth be told, none of the books I have found thus far speak to her drowning whilst running from giants. My research is ongoing. 

So far I have found that, knowing her fate, all she asked from the invading horde was to name the land for her and that has happened. Knowing that all things must pass, I suppose one can rest easy if your wishes are met. I digress, she was Eire or Eiru, a daughter of Delbaeth and Ernmas, sister to Banba and Fodla. She and her sisters were married to three kings of the Tuatha De Dannan, MacCuill, MacCecht, and MacGrene, all that, and apart from having her island named for her, she wasn't safe at home either.

The latest threat seems to be the season most people love, summer. I never have loved summer but I realize I am in the minority. As the climate becomes more unstable perhaps more people are beginning to feel like me. Last winter was barely a New England winter by any standard. I am afraid of what the coming summers may bring. I think we may suffer the same fate as dear Eiru as we humans try to run from these self-made climate giants. 

I do feel it is our purpose to stand against and protect ourselves from danger as much as possible.  There are always forces rising to take us on or take us out. No castle is impenetrable in the end and there is always an end. Until that end may we all feel safe in our homes. May we all have what we need to feel and be secure and may those that rise against us leave us to live out our lives in peace and love, free from fear and want, in harmony with the natural world around us....now that's a prayer.

Painting Credit: The Harp of Erin, Thomas Buchanan Read Date: 1867 - Cincinnati Art Museum