"Something. There's a bowl, a spoon, and something that looks like mud but okay, vegetable soup, " said the ET. "Vegetables for a cat? Strange! Well, even though your son is outside, his presence is still here. It permeates everything in the trailer, doesn't it? You couldn't walk a minute from one room to the next without thinking of him: his smell, his things, and messes are everywhere. His storybooks and color books are the only things neatly on his shelf because he doesn't like them. They aren't animated." "He's always been partial to movement just like any boy." She paused and thought. "Yeah, even when he goes out to play he is still everywhere in here--every room. It was just a few years ago, sitting on this very pot, when he was yelling, 'Mommy come wipe me' or 'Gabey, come wipe me'--something like that." "Truly the sentimental substance of long term memories," said the higher authority indifferently. "I half way wanted to desert him in a pasture along the highway." "I dare say. Never part from your better instincts as they say. You have, I must tell you my dear girl, failed your ideals. The big toy car running on D batteries, the matchbox cars he crashes into walls, and that gun that shoots out big plunger shaped bullets that stick onto car windows--all of these items you have succumbed to buying for him even though initially you said that you wouldn't. Yes, he is a creature of movement. You've known this all along. And yet, choosing to ignore the fact that he goes through such tirades in favor of thinking him as a partner leading you to the entity, you have succumbed to his tantrums and tears in supermarkets and five & dime stores. You continually buy him toys that aggravate his worse propensities and all those chocolate pacifiers." "He is exploring his world. He's trying on new versions of himself." "He is a demanding, egocentric creature of movement far from the worlds of contemplation and you give into his extortion. He gives ultimatums and runs away from you at the drop of a hat only to be hugged later. What sort of graduate psychology classes at Rice University taught you parenting techniques like that?" She laughed. "It is a little pathetic, I know." "It's inane: a woman like you limiting herself to reproducing and rearing young .You do this as though you can't find more purpose to life than this...someone like you deigning to define herself in mortal roles of birth, reproduction, and death to have someone to succeed you. Have you succumbed to being a woman, lost without a mommy role. Fool, experience your contumely now...Feel those wings that no one else has. You are innately volant if left to yourself. Cast him away. Let him fend for himself." All the time the higher authority was smiling and talking mildly like a mother reading a bedtime story. "It isn't like that. I brought him into the world. I am responsible for him. Besides that, he has led me into--" "Into leaves"