The Way Things Were---Briefly

 To be sure, there was once a  very active, if that word can apply,  group  of mothers of young children in Valley Falls--- if being active in a group means going to each others' houses with babies and young children for coffe or tea.  It's odd, looking back, a long way back, how some things come about with no specific beginning and certainly without  noticeable ending. 

  When my first child was born, there lived in the village, mothers of other young children: Nancy, Lorraine, Sandy, Sharon, Sally and I came to meet at each others' homes. I don't remember if they met before I joined with them, but I think the coffee klatches began after I was in association with them. Some  of us, including myself, and probably Sandy, may have been working part-time, but most likely they were not working during their early motherhood years. Most of us brought our kids  to those meetings, the older kids playing on the floor or outside if the weather permitted, while an infant slept in a baby carriage on the porch.

  It's uncertain how the meetings came to be, but they were an accepted and ordinary practice in the village, a happening that seemed a normal and permanent part of life. I don't think any of us even thought about how or when the last such meeting would be;  it was just a natural and self-evolving part of our lives. I suppose we talked about our kids. I remember some, if not most, were looking forward to the time their kids would be starting school. I was not of that mindset, really not wanting to turn my children's' lives over to others. But besides preferring either coffee or tea, I don't think there were ever any disagreements, certainly not about politics or government. And as per the culture of the times, the kids, though present, were not the center of discussions. The trend then seemed to be to downplay them, not to glorify them, as in present times. 

So I don't know what we could have talked about, or how it came to be decided to hold the get-togethers, or who determined whose house was next, or what time would be good. I only know, that while we had to have known these meetings would not last forever, they were such ongoing if insignificant life happenings, that their ending was  like  a cloud of smoke, drifting away with nobody being aware. 

  The point, if I have one, in addition to my adding to the 30,000 November words, is that our very lives are subject not only to surprise devastations, but in addition, to those  changes wrought by the inevitable passage of time. 

Moral of story: Nothing lasts.