MY SAFE PLACE<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ache for home lives in all of us,\u201d wrote Maya Angelou.
\u201cThe safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.\u201d<\/p>\n
Way before Covid, when I was writing a book with a Secret\u00a0Service agent, Ray, he and I spoke regularly on Facetime, we met in person, and\u00a0before we ended a writing session, Ray always said, \u201cStay safe.\u201d It wasn\u2019t\u00a0gratuitous. I could tell by his tone of voice and the kindness in his eyes that\u00a0he really meant it. In fact, that was what his entire career was all about.\u00a0Keeping people safe.<\/p>\n
These days, we routinely tell each other, \u201cStay safe.\u201d We\u00a0say it when someone leaves our home. We finish our emails and Zoom meetings\u00a0with it. It\u2019s a reminder that during this pandemic, the health and well being\u00a0of friends and family are the most important things in our world.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s important to feel safe, especially in our homes. My\u00a0mother was a stoic New Englander, with no regard for comfort. In fact, she\u00a0shunned it. She slept on a twin bed with a thin foam pillow, worn sheets, and\u00a0she used a dial up phone that she only retired under great duress from my\u00a0sister and me. The seats of her chairs and couch were hard and rough to the\u00a0touch, and it was difficult to find a comfortable place to be. She was offended\u00a0when I told her I couldn\u2019t sleep on the forty-year-old pullout bed in her den\u00a0with my legs higher than my head. I asked her if she\u2019d consider a new mattress\u00a0so I could be comfortable and sleep well when I visited.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a Beautyrest,\u201d she claimed and added in a resolute
voice, \u201cI\u2019m not into comfort. It\u2019s not my cup of tea.\u201d\u00a0She thought I should feel that way, too, but the inability\u00a0to sleep felt unsafe to me so I stayed in a hotel which she didn\u2019t condone.<\/p>\n
In direct opposition to my mother\u2019s\u00a0sentiment, my home is filled with down and\u00a0feathers. My first questions to a guest are, \u201cAre you comfortable? Can I get\u00a0you anything?\u201d It’s the polar opposite of my mother\u2019s preference of utility\u00a0over comfort.<\/p>\n
I have secure places all over my house. The oversized sumptuous
chair where I read the newspaper in the mornings and do the LA Times crossword\u00a0puzzle. My yummy couch with fat arms and a soft cotton covering that creates\u00a0the sensation of being swaddled. The lighting which is easy and relaxing on the\u00a0eyes. And my bedroom. Anxiety is a bully that I fight regularly and my bedroom\u00a0is where I go to ground myself when I\u2019m anxious or sad. It was built below\u00a0street level and when I step across the threshold, the atmosphere feels
different from the rest of the house. The noise and chaos out in the world,\u00a0both physical and psychic, are non-existent. It overlooks a fertile hillside\u00a0and the only sounds are ravens and crows calling to each other, squirrels\u00a0playing in the brush, a family of deer munching on greenery and the odd helicopter\u00a0whirring high in the sky. \u00a0<\/p>\n
All of this is deeply comforting but the piece de\u00a0resistance, the place that absorbs my stress and encourages slow breathing and sighs of relief is my king size bed.\u00a0That\u2019s\u00a0where I can feel my breath deepening and my solar plexus relaxing. I have a\u00a0mountain of pillows, pastel sheets and soft duvet covers that are light as air.
I watch TV there, (not the news), talk on the phone to good friends, read\u00a0books, play with my cat, knit beautiful things, come up with writing ideas and\u00a0find my center in a dizzying world. My bed is legendary among my friends. When\u00a0a girlfriend and I sprawl out to laugh or cry about life and love, husbands and\u00a0boyfriends, feuds and forgiveness, we feel safe and we never want to leave.<\/p>\n
As a teenager, when I toured with my ballet company, I slept
on lumpy mattresses and I danced on injuries with very little sleep. That\u2019s\u00a0over now. Today, I go for comfort above all else and life has become more safe\u00a0and friendly. So when someone tells you, \u201cStay safe,\u201d take it in because it\u00a0really means something. It means everything.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Do you have a safe\u00a0 place?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MY SAFE PLACE \u201cThe ache for home lives in all of us,\u201d wrote Maya Angelou.\u201cThe safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.\u201d Way before Covid, when I was writing a book with a Secret\u00a0Service agent, Ray, he and I spoke regularly on Facetime, we met in person, and\u00a0before we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}