“So much of life is unpredictable and yet we all search for security,” I wrote this morning in my journal, apropos of a thought trailing through my mind at the moment, which I can’t remember, my mind wont to wander in the early morning journal. Mind: one of those unpredictables.

I stared out at our backyard fence, a sturdy six-food wooden fence called a privacy fence, security against intruders in theory, although I noted a Frisbee on the ground which I need to remember to toss back across the fence to the kids who live behind us.

That got me to think about security and why we buy big houses and big SUVs in the assumption they provide safety.

Pulling out my trusty American Heritage Dictionary which contains, in the back, the root of words, re: etymology, and especially, the Indo-European roots, I looked up secure which  gave me Indo-European seu-2 in the Appendix.

The above map shows the theories of how the Indo-European language, and people, migrated from origins in the Caucasus  Mountains. They got around.

But back to seu-2: Pronoun of the third person and reflexive (referring back to the subject of the sentence); further appearing in various forms referring to the social group as an entity. “(we-our) selves.”

In other words, family/clan.

I was born into a family that provided security for one another. Not necessarily financial, although that was certainly true in a limited sense, but rather the security of belonging.

I realize not everyone has that kind of security, families being what they are, but for me, it has. And although I have wandered wide and often, even in my worst and most chaotic times, I belonged. I was not cast out.

Therein lies my strength, my faith, and my security, as I watch a new crop of babies, “the cousins'” nephews and nieces’ babies, grow. None of us own SUVs. A few own trucks, none of us own giant houses, although Jeanne has built a small boutique hotel, but all of the homes will fit whichever of the family visits.

We all own inflatable mattresses for the occasion.

.