The egg.

The egg is the perfect shape, the perfect meal, the perfect self-contained safety measure, particularly (as my organic farmer friend once told me) if you don’t wash it after plucking it from the nest. It won’t go bad covered in muck, at least not for a while.

Which is no kind of promise or guarantee. The muck consists not just of nesting materials but also hen poop, and Americans are nothing if not a people that likes its food immaculate so that we may believe we are safe. We could just wash the eggs before we crack them, if we want to avoid poop in our omelets, but American eggs are washed before they get anywhere near American fridges, even by organic farmers because even organic farmers know that Americans will not buy poopy eggs.

Scramble the egg, though, and you have the start of a perfect meal — quick, easy, protein-rich, but what about cholesterol, what about egg yolks vs. egg whites? How many eggs can I eat, am I advised to eat, may I feed my children, fry up of a Sunday morning? Not to mention that once the egg is out of its shell someone will surely suggest avocado toast and that can only lead to economic disaster and general mockery in the press.

The shape, though: The shape remains perfection. Birds produce their offspring (or fauxspring) in a container tailor-made to ensure that even if they roll around within the nest, the eggs will be less likely to roll off the nest into danger. The higher up the bird family lives, the more oval the eggs, because danger is real and the bird mom’s body knows it.

When my firstborn turned three, we got a bright orange chair, oval, with a swivel base and articulated hood. A very wee person may need a small place to hide, we reasoned, and a little sister might come to need one, too, and all their friends, together and in turns, would pull the hood down and then spin and spin and giggle and be small and contained in an orange egg, dreaming who knows what, their dreams safe and held, in my house, not far from my arms.

Four years ago I brought the chair, far too small now for the arms and legs and hair that all the kids have sprouted, to Good Will. Eventually even eggs roll away.