Near the Center of the Feminine Mystery

Shortly after posting the Stevenson quote (“The Enchanted Isle” below) I began to hear faint echoes in memory. A quick search of some old files turned up the following from an obviously enraptured husband to an old (and now defunct) Yahoo group (entitled something like “Happy Wives and Trained Husbands”):

"[My wife] has arrived home and my heart is fluttering with excitement! I hurry to do her bidding. I do not feel complete until she is home. I'm near the center of the feminine mystery, an intimate part of the life of a beautiful woman. So close to her, caring only for her comfort and happiness..."

I am reminded not only of Stevenson’s “enchanted isle among the storms of life,” but of how love transforms surroundings. I remember the special magic that pervaded the apartments and neighborhoods of certain females in my younger days, even the freeway offramps leading to these sacred precincts. It is the way Freddy Eynsford-Hill felt “on the street where you live,” as a lovesick sentry posted outside Prof. Higgins’ home, hoping for just a glimpse of Liza Dolittle.

Now, of course, her abode is mine and ours, and the covered playground of two kids. And yet, everything about it reminds me that it is she who created it, who is its head and heart, the leader who holds us all in her loving embrace. I give thanks each day that I live here with her, and them, in her “enchanted isle,” “near the center of the feminine mystery, an intimate part of the life of a beautiful woman.”