My Safe Place

Everyone should have a "Safe Place".....a place where they can go and let the frustration, anger, fear, sadness, whatever, just fade away.  

I actually have two safe places - one is my front porch where I rock and listen to the wind as it causes the tall pines, just to the east of our house, to sway in the soft breeze. Sometimes, there's enough breeze that I feel it softly brushing my face......and I can smell the fragrance of the hedge bushes, now blooming. In the distance, I hear the low mooing of cows. I watch the hawks, as they circle the stand of pines across the road. Wispy white clouds float gently across the clear blue sky. 

Sitting in my yard is the old house where my grandparents, and then my parents, lived - or am I sitting it the yard of the old house? It was here, first......for many years. Our house sits on the land where my grandparents

old garage sat. The old building made of unpainted boards with a dirt floor and no door. The dirt was covered with spills of old oil and gasoline. I don't remember when the old building was torn down, but I remember it vividly, as if it still stood.....ready to be seen and entered.

My grandfather drove a school bus, and in those days it was owned by the driver. The yellow bus "cover" could be removed and the truck used as the driver's vehicle. As I sit on my porch, I thought back to many years before. I must have been 4 or 5 years of age. I remember grandpa and granny taking me, in the old bus, to the creek - Cohay Creek - to play in the sand.

I sit, in the rocker, in my safe place and remember old days, old times, family no longer here, and I miss them. I almost feel, if I wished long and hard enough, my granny would come out the back door and down the steps - wiping her hands on the apron she always wore.

My safe place takes me away from the stress of today. I can remember yesterday and forget today and the pain and tears that are behind the doors of my house.

But today, I will go to my other safe place. I will unlock

the doors of my small church. As I walk through the sanctuary, down among the pews I imagine they are filled with people no longer here. This was the church, not this building but this church, where my mother's parents were married - in 1910. In the soft afternoon sunlight, I will turn on the organ and I will lose myself in the hymns that I have loved, for so many years.

I turn on the organ and began to play "Precious Lord, take my hand....lead me on, let me stand, I am tired, I am weak, I am worn".......As I change the stops, the organ swells in the empty church and my heart swells with it. I pray, as I play. I pray for understanding and I pray for healing. 

The daylight begins to wane.......it's time to leave this safe place. I can go home, to my other safe place.

Everyone needs a safe place. How lucky I am to have two.