#7 WORD SERIES: MENAGERIE
A WORD: MENAGERIE
“Menagerie” me.nag.er.ie | noun a collection of wild animals kept in captivity for exhibition. • a strange or diverse collection of people or things
Etymologically speaking (can’t you just picture a dinner party where all the guests are speaking etymologically’?), the English language borrowed menagerie from the Middle French, ménager: to keep house, to manage the family dwelling which included cattle and other domestic animals under one roof.
The meaning is shown clearly in traditional Christmas nativity scenes: Joseph, Mary, and newborn Jesus are warmed by the body heat of contented lambs, cows, chickens, and a donkey sharing their enclosed space. In ages past, and still in some cultures, domestic animals come indoors. As I wrote those words, Scooter Sublime cleared his goldendoodle throat and suggested that I delete the phrase, “in ages past.” But this blog posting does not belong to Scooter Sublime.
The French had borrowed their word. Of course, they had. We all borrow words all the time. In this case, in the 12th c., the French borrowed from Vulgar Latin, mansionaticum, “dwelling, or household.”
In the late 17th c., the English borrowed ménagerie, dropped the accent sign—of course they did, what with the French/English competition for the world wealth and dominance—but that’s a different story.
As a slew of English sailing ships slipped to foreign shores where sailors saw and snatched up seemingly sensational wild animals, the definition of menagerie got refitted. Rats carried aboard those ships were surely wild, but were not considered sensational, therefore (can you believe it), rats were never selected for exhibition. Menagerie described a place where wild or foreign animals were kept and exhibited; “a place to keep animals of several kinds for curiosity,” says Oxford English Dictionary.
Little by little, the word expanded to describe any grouping, people, animals, or things that proved quirky, wild, strange, diverse, or disorganized. You know, like a roomful of four-year-old children on Halloween night; or, like my family.
Recently, we Pines had a family dinner. No one was speaking etymologically. There we were, sixteen of us, gathered from Long Island, New Orleans, Tacoma, West Seattle, Kingston, Vashon Island, and Gig Harbor. We ranged in age from five to eighty-eight. Some of us play chess, some play Skipbo; a few play musical instruments, others, the radio, the market, or video games. We bring together a range of work from a vice presidential office to a kindergarten classroom, workers in the air or on the seas, therapists, artists, entrepreneurs, introverts, and extroverts.
We are straight, queer, married, divorced, partnered, single, step-related, even unrelated but belonging. We are tall, short, thick, thin, and in-between. We have strong opinions, some of which are good. We are a mix of conservative and liberal in all sorts of ways, vegetarians, and carnivores, left-handed and right-handed. We are, to varying degrees, religious, and seriously not. We are highly educated, as well as hardly at all, if by educated, one means length of time under institutional instruction. It’s a menagerie, I tell you, this collection of Pines. This family is bright, open, and inquisitive about some things, dead-set against others. We have the “Never!” and “What-ever” sorts. To a person we love laughter, the stars, food, whales, the Pacific Northwest, and each other.
Thank goodness for love, because for a few years there, two powerful ‘P’s allowed some touchy differences to emerge among us. You might understand. At various times, various members grew discomforted by periods of preposterous politics and prolonged pandemic. It felt like being stuck in the Christmas stable without the promised peace; jostling for space with a crowing rooster, clucking chickens, the cow’s endless cud-chewing, sheep bleating, attempts to sleep on scratchy straw, and the final indignity, a farting donkey. Stuff of this sort can challenge contentment. The menagerie’s mood moved some of us from being delightfully diverse to being defensive, even willingly divided.
And then? And then we faced a major heath scare. And on the heels of that, another. Members of this menagerie faced fear, and we remembered love. Oh, how we do love each other, we remembered.
We remembered how fun it is to laugh together. We remembered our non-contentious history, our habit of fun, and our love. We remembered that ideas, opinions, even facts are important but not foundational to the life of our menagerie. So, we gathered from points around the country. We shared a day. We shared a meal. We shared space with new members. We shared old stories. We shared Christmas contributions to a charity. We caught up on current situations. We laughed and we laughed. We let love rule.
DEFINE LOVE: QUIRKY, WILD, DISORGANIZED, AND DIVERSE
