Today I went blog-surfing and dropped in on Bernard Shuford who took me on a trip down memory lane with his post about a mouse in his house.
When I was about 10 years old, I caught a tiny grey mouse and put him in a mason jar with airholes in the lid. I loved that little mouse. He had the cutest round pink ears that popped up and down like a puppy's ears in anticipation of something good or bad. My little mouse would scratch the sides of the jar with its teensey little nails every time I came near it...like he knew I was there just to visit him.
As I contemplate this mouse (which I had all but forgotten till I read Bernard's post), I think, in reality, that my mouse was actually hoping the little girl in the gingham dress would just let him out of his glass house.
But I was a very lonely child. Most of my time I spent in solitude, writing letters I would never send to a mother I would never see. Some of the time I spent following after brothers who didn't like "girls" hanging around. That may account for my fondness towards this little mouse. I don't know.
Anyway, one day my stepmother discovered that mouse in my room and it was made quite clear that it was no place to keep a mouse and the mouse must be set free. So I took him out to our previously harvested cornfield and gave him freedom. After that the mason jar looked so empty sitting on my dresser. It was a cold winter as I recall. Wonder if that little mouse survived and went on to marry and raise a family. Or if one of the multitude of cats we had around the farm had him for lunch one day.
There's an up side to my empty mason jar. The next summer I filled it full of lightning bugs and watched them flicker each night until I went to sleep. I let them go the next morning. And caught more the next night.
Today as I take my mouse in hand and click, copy and capture images and words on my monitor screen, I think of all those which do not belong in the house. Those that bring me comfort. Those I write to comfort others. Those that flicker in the night of loneliness or fear. And then those I must set free. In all of it, I think best to remember those which bring me comfort and release those which imprison me, then bring into captivity those which only Christ can tend. selahV
Thanks Bernard for this trip down memory lane. [copyrighted, hariette petersen, 2007]
