Dear blogging friends and family.
I hope this post finds you well. I haven’t been doing a lot of writing on my blog, but I have been writing. Every two weeks I meet with my writing group and we write about all sorts of things. Recently, one of my writing buds suggested a mouse trap as our writing prompt. Okay, I said and I took it home and turned the idea of it over and over in my mind for two whole weeks. Since we’ve had cats in our house for most of my life mice have never been a huge problem but I finally came up with a memory that I unearthed the night before my writing group was to meet. Yes, I know, nothing like doing things the last minute hey? But, sometimes the best things in life are just whipped up at the last moment.
I hope you like the story below and it reminds you that the things we are most afraid of, when put into perspective, are actually the things that teach us the most in life. Here is my “Mouse trap free zone,” story….
Ring, Ring.” Picking up our cordless phone I said, “Hello?” “Debbie, can you and David come right over?” my mom asked in a high pitched, panicked voice. “Sure, what’s up?” I asked, motioning for my husband who was starting to rise off the couch to stay right where he was. “I think I just saw a mouse race across the room, “she said fearfully, “ and you know how I am…..” “Yeah,” I said, “we’ll be right over.”
On the drive over to my mom’s house I shared a story from my past. It was 1967 and I was 7 years old and we were living in Chilliwack. Mom had been a widow for two years and was pulling herself out of the fog of grief. She had taken an evening secretarial course and recently found a job working as a hotel desk clerk at the Empress. At this lovely hotel she was able to put a smile on her face for the guests and step away from the heaviness in her life for a few hours every day. Anyway, we were settling into our new life and had moved into a small house perfect for the three of us. We used to laugh over our fancy address, “49 Broadway,” which made our street sound better than the modest homes surrounding us. One rare evening that she was home, for she often worked the night shift, I heard my mom’s distressed voice.
Ahhh! She shrieked and I ran into our kitchen to find mom standing on one of our grey vinyl and chrome kitchen chairs. She was jumping up and down as much as one can while balancing. Her eyes were wildly searching the room. “Mouse,” my mom shrieked and I quickly joined her on another chair. A second later, my older sister Joni ran in from the back bedroom. Although she was only eleven or twelve at the time, with calm control she took in the whole scene and asked, “where’d it go?” “Under the stove I think, “ mom said, her finger frantically pointing while still hopping up and down.
Joni casually flicked her long ponytail behind her shoulder and took a broom out of the closet. She plopped down on her tummy and slowly pushed the wooden end of the broom under the stove. In a flash, a little grey mouse raced out from under the stove and huddled under the baseboard beneath the sink. “Eek,” mom shouted, “hit it with the broom Joni!” she yelled. Taking one look at Joni I knew that was the last thing she was ever going to do. She had taken care of her good friend Lorna’s pet rats while Dad was still alive. He had let her keep them in his garage and she took really good care of them and I’m sure was sad when Lorna returned from her trip and she had to give them back. I knew the last thing she would do was kill the mouse but I didn’t want to spend the rest of the evening on the chair with mom either. “Joni do something,” I pleaded.
Joni left the kitchen and came back with a box that had been in our utility room. The mouse hadn’t moved but it’s little pink nose was twitching madly. While mom and I looked on, Joni carefully placed the box near the mouse and then as if she was riding in a cattle round up, she basically herded the mouse into the box with the broom and quick, bam, boom she closed the lid. She turned to look at us and said, “You can come down now.”
There were many other mouse related incidents in the years after Dad died but mom would never lay mouse traps in our house. As much as mom hated the mice, she didn’t want to hurt them. When I was ten years old my mom was dating Hamish Macintosh and one day he brought over a Siamese kitten to give us. He didn’t last long, Hamish that is, but that cat, whom we named Kitty, took care of our mouse problem for a long, long time and was a favoured friend of mom’s.
I was just wrapping up the story when David and I finally arrived at my mom’s house. After Hamish left, my mom did meet a really nice guy. Bud was my step dad for thirteen years. He was a kind, generous person and along with our cat Kitty, he kept the mice at bay in our house. When mom called us for help she was a widow again and Kitty was gone too. We got out of the car, only to see mom standing at the screen door nervously looking at us and then back into the house. When David got close to her she had relief in her eyes, she exhaled and said, “thanks so much for coming.” A moment later, Mom and I assumed our position on top of the kitchen chairs, shrieking as we spotted the mouse running through the kitchen. David calmly took stock of the situation, then just like Jon did twenty five years earlier, he caught the mouse easily. He turned to us and said, “You can come down now.”
Mom’s left us almost ten years ago now and we have had a few mouse incidence since then but I’m not scared of mice anymore. I realize now there are bigger things to be scared of in life.
I miss mom!
Memories are a mouse trap free zone. They capture the moments and strip them of anything irritating and remove animosity and leave instead a tiny grey mouse, with a soft pink nose that looks at you and reminds you to be brave.
The End
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I want to thank my sister B for correcting a few things in my story, regarding the Empress hotel and Hamish’s last name. The one above is the edited version. Also, when I mentioned to my sister J that I was writing a story about the time we lived together in Chilliwack she shared with me that she actually flushed the mouse down the toilet!!! I never knew that until now. Also, I thought the pet rats were her rats but she was actually rat sitting for her best friend Lorna. Isn’t that a funny thing about memories and how we shape them to be what we need in life. Anyway, it was a fun topic to write about and I hope you enjoyed the story. It certainly whooshed me back in time when mom and I were standing on chairs, freaked out about a mouse under our feet! Ha….I miss her…especially this time of year.
I have another story coming soon that I just wrote called, “The Gift of Winter’s Solstice.” Although the weather has been warm for this time of year, winter is quickly approaching and it was a piece I needed to write. My writing group seemed to enjoy it and oh we had so much fun as we always do listening to each other’s stories. I will share it with you soon. But for now, I will wave goodbye and hope you are staying warm.
Winter’s coming!
Until we connect again, may you be well, happy and peaceful.
Blessings from Hope