Or: In The Beginning Was The Chicken or The Egg

One of nature’s wonderful delights, for those of us who are easily amused, is a kitten chasing her tail. Is it an evolutionary impulse which causes the kitten to lie in a soft sunny place for the purposes of, after resting, training herself in the finer arts of feline pursuit? Perhaps it is, in the genius that is Evolution, a polyvalent delight, a telos achieved in the now for the kitten and also for the young mother who is nursing her child, bored out of her gourd, and a little tired, receiving peace and comfort from the kitten who is chasing her tail.

The kitten’s training exercises now complete, she wanders off into her patrols, seeking where she may to find a way out, but all the windows and doors are screened off, and every way out is simply another way in, but around the house she goes, patrolling. Young Mother rises, compelled by boredom to seek where she may to find a way out of her gourd, so, after tightening the bonds which secure her baby into her bosom on this fine spring day, she loosens the bonds which secure the screens closed against the kitten’s absconding.

It is a neighborhood into which Young Mother escapes, planted by city fathers in 1925, somewhere in-between the timber boom and the industrial boom. It is now 92 years later, enough time for a child to have been born, lived, married, produced children and careers, fought in wars, survived economic and marital hardship and change, grown weary, grown old, and perhaps has died or is about to die, given the mortality tables nowadays. It is not just a generation, but an entire lifespan which has waxed and waned.

There is womanly chattering nearby, a grandmother and a mother and Young Mother and a toddler or two, with the occasional automobile passing by, recognized or not. What is the conversation? It is of the weather, of politics, of family relations, of occupation, of career, of local government, of gardens, of school, of transportation, of–

Just what distinguishes 1925 from 2017?

–of hopes and dreams? I think not. Hopes and dreams are not for casual conversation out in the open, where there are no fences. –of hopes and dreams dashed? I think so.

“That worthless husband of mine…”

When Sheila’s man moved out, there was a ripple through the community, and the rest of us made adjustments, trying to be nice to her children while also warning our own children that there would be trouble, hoping to convince the children both of the particular kind of trouble, because who knows what kind of trouble comes from deep-seated emotional consuming fires which are kindled by divorce? And also that our children should be faithful to their friends in kindness and in deed, actual friends, not mere playmates. On the other hand, there was an envy, palpable, depending on who you talked to: Sheila had become free of her man, the asshole. I must admit, however, he was good to me, just tall and a little rough, and, I think, probably immature in certain ways. Maybe. I’m not sure.

Who said it? Who said, “That worthless husband of mine…”? Not Sheila. She never uttered an unkind word about her man. She rarely spoke of him at all, in fact, and her liberation from him was de jure, at least as far as we all could observe. The de jure declaration had more of an effect on us than the de facto reality she was living had on her. No, the others, namely, grandmothers, mothers, Young Mother, uttered those words, and regularly.

When the time of conversation comes to a close, Young Mother looks at Other Young Mother, knowing that an emotional bond has been forged, a strong bond, probably unbreakable (except by circumstance, which comes by chance and cannot be accounted for), but also knowing that Other Young Mother is about to go into her domicile to interact with her own man. It’s time for Young Mother to return to her own domicile, to make the life that she and her man agreed to make, an agreement forged in utter and absolute freedom, and witnessed, gazed upon by mother and father and mother and father. In these days, there are a few attachés via divorce and remarriage, and also illegitimacy, but the ties that bind are mother and father and mother and father, even if the ones who occupy those offices are destructive, and the attaché has no authority beyond helpful advice and good counsel, or unhelpful and bad.

“That worthless husband of mine…” An utterance she received from her mother many times. Young Mother thinks of her own utterances to the same effect. “By the power invested in me…” is the other utterance which engages, in fact which ended the engagement, putting to rest all anxieties with respect to legitimacy, and ushering in new anxieties, not just an utterance, but a declaration, with authority, “…I now pronounce you husband and wife.”

Is it an evolutionary impulse which causes nearly every other house in the neighborhood to be occupied by those under authority? And by what authority to bind together those whose binding would be in various stages of decay?

Young Mother, closing the door to the neighborhood behind her, finds the kitten asleep, having finished for the time being her patrols for freedom. The infant awakens, hungry, and Young Mother returns to utter boredom, nourishing her offspring. And her husband’s.