Friday, January 05, 2007
Shampooing the Mouse
Alas, it’s that time of year to take stock and make resolutions. Looking over my own checkered year of too much coffee and too little patience, the accomplishment I’m most proud of is certainly the most unexpected: I have learned to shampoo a mouse. Not just any mouse, of course – I’ve learned to shampoo my daughter’s much-beloved pet mouse, Dash, who now requires a daily medicinal bubble-bath, on account of the mange.
I know, I know – don’t bother rolling your eyeballs. I’ve already suffered all the derision I need about the hours I’ve devoted to nursing a mangy rodent. But, truly, the effort I’ve put in to developing just the right touch to secure this slippery brown critter in my fingertips without squeezing the breath out of him is, I’d argue, this year’s rare glimpse of my very best self. Picture the forlorn, shivering shrivel of a wringing-wet schnauzer, and double the self-pity – no, triple it – and you’ve got a hint of the sadness of a sopping mouse. Add some bubbles between the twitching ears, and imagine the deftness necessary to pull off a full-body medicinal massage of a being the size of your thumb, and you can understand my pride. The effort is worth it, afterward, when I cup him in my palm and rub him dry with the corner of the towel ... and, I swear to you, this tiny critter leans into the soft terrycloth, his shining eyes narrowing with pleasure as he basks in my warmth and care. See what I mean? I am my best self in those moments, with the mouse sheltered in my hands and my daughter leaning over my shoulder, blanketing both of us with concern.
I think of this as my Ministry of the Mundane – and I’ll bet you could name some things you do that are like shampooing a mouse. Perhaps it’s carrying a hot mug of coffee over to your beloved when part of you thinks, “Whatsa matter, your legs broke?” Or maybe it’s leaving the mushrooms you love out of a lasagne because it will make someone else’s fork a little more lovely with every bite. Maybe it’s turning down the covers, or tucking in a blanket, or lingering at a bedside for a few quiet moments when you really just want to get back to your email or the bad TV show that’s obliterating the memory of your workday. Maybe your Ministry of the Mundane involves biting your tongue – not saying to an elderly relative, “Yes, I’ve heard that story,” or “You asked me that a few minutes ago!” Perhaps the most we can do is what may at first seem the least. That’s what Harriet Beecher Stowe had in mind over 150 years ago when she wrote, “To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.”
We all have some uglies to atone for this year. Close your eyes and roll your tape of 2006 and dredge up, if you can stand it, the scenes you’d most hate to see on YouTube. Mine would include a shot of my neck vein pulsing while I use unattractive language to enumerate the clutter in my daughters’ bedrooms. I’ll leave you to your own horror show.
But as we appraise our past 12 month’s behavior with narrowed eyes and arched brows, I hope we’ll ask ourselves gently, appreciatively, why we do any number of small things with care. One answer may be: Why not? And that small answer is the tossed pebble whose ripples travel everywhere.
Most of us, after all, don’t live in broad, brilliant strokes, but in tiny pointillist moments that give shape and meaning to our lives. I’m holding in mind this image of the subtle shades and texture of real life as a talisman against the airbrushed fakery of the January magazine covers that try to shame all of us into reinventing ourselves, big time, for the new year.
I have always loved the phrase “small wonder,” and now I’m feeling its beauty and weight. What small wonders are you accomplishing already in your daily, mundane ministry? To put it another way, what mouse are you shampooing? Here’s to more of the same in 2007; maybe I’ll see you at the sink.
Community • Customs & Rituals • Family & Friends • Permalink • Printer Friendly
A random pick from more than 460 Michiana Chronicles -- refresh the browser to see another set:
April Lidinsky -- Shampooing the Mouse / More essays by April
Joe Chaney -- More essays by Joe
Ken Smith -- More essays by Ken
Jeanette Saddler Taylor -- More essays by Jeanette
Heather Curlee Novak -- More essays by Heather
David James -- More essays by David
Elizabeth Van Jacob -- More essays by Elizabeth
Jeff Nixa -- More essays by Jeff
Louise Collins -- More essays by Louise
Jonathan Nashel -- More essays by Jonathan
Chronicles Home | Email:
Leave a note for any of the authors at our WebNote page, or maybe you'd like a copy of our book? Then there's our Twitter and Facebook pages!
About the series
Michiana Chronicles is a series of radio essays by Jonathan Nashel, Louise Collins, Joe Chaney, Jeanette Saddler Taylor, Jeff Nixa, April Lidinsky, Ken Smith, Heather Curlee Novak, David James, and Elizabeth Van Jacob.
Michiana is the region of north-central Indiana and southern Michigan roughly centered on South Bend, Indiana.
Michiana Chronicles airs on Fridays at 7:35 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on WVPE (88.1 FM), the home of public radio in Elkhart / South Bend, Indiana.
| February 2012 | ||||||
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | |||
Recent pieces
Good Eaters -- Reflections on the topic of food, brought about, no doubt, by this time of harvest and Thanksgiving, led to my reading Thomas Keneally’s recent book, “Three Famines.” In it, he gives a general overview of the physical and mental processes of starvation – pretty horrifying and unimaginable from where we sit – then writes specifically about the three hunger-events. Ireland in the 1840’s, Bengal in the 1940’s and Ethiopia in the 1980’s are the “three famines” of the title. Although seemingly unrelated as to world-area and time period, there is a striking commonality and it’s not the traditional “act-of-God” explanation. “Acts of God:” droughts, floods, etc. often begin the privations, but the human hand exacerbates the problems into a cataclysm. By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.
The Excellence of the Long Distance Runner -- Consider cross country, the sport of choice for our family’s young athlete. That’s a 5000 meter feat of speed and endurance. At practice each day the teams run even farther, so on Saturdays they’re ready to race each other hard for 20 or 25 minutes. Near the end of the course they speed up because that’s the kind of people they have become, and they don’t stop until they have travelled the length of 54 football fields. By Ken Smith.
Bacon Before Husband -- Do you have a daily list? I don’t mean tasks for work or chores for home, I mean a Happy List. I have a Happy List running through my head most of the time. This list tends to be fickle and definitely changes with my mood. It is rare that something gets crossed off of it but I get immense satisfaction from my list just the same. My list makes friends laugh and strangers think I am...stranger. By Heather Curlee Novak.
“A feminist walks into a fraternal lodge …” -- Today’s story begins like a joke: What happens when a feminist walks into a fraternal lodge? The answer isn’t very funny, and it isn’t really about me -- it’s about who runs for office, and who doesn’t. But, yes, in this scenario I am the feminist cheerfully walking into the fraternal lodge, of the kind gently lampooned in The Flintstones as the Royal Order of the Water Buffaloes. By April Lidinsky.
South Bend Spring -- Would I ever think I’d find myself parting from one group of young adults yesterday, and then actually tearing downtown to join another? My knee-jerk reaction would normally be to slip into my hidey-hole on the third floor of Wiekamp Hall on the IU campus, or to run home—only three blocks—to read in solitude and eat Raman noodles. The first group—my first-ever class of college freshman English students—seem bemused at my political positions and ready to describe me as “professor,” but as a hopeless product of another day and time. By David James.
Call Me Bartman -- It’s that time of year when we wait in expectation of another World Series victory by the New York Yankees or the Philadelphia Phillies, while recalling (or trying to forget) another lost season in the sad history of the Chicago Cubs. Anyway, that’s the way Cubs fans talk about it. I don’t see it that way. In my view, the Cubs are the greatest team in the history of sports, and I wouldn’t change a thing about them. By Joe Chaney.
Autumn -- Have you noticed too? Can you feel it? Are you as excited as I am? After the wait of nine months for its rebirth, autumn is back. The real weather for football is here. The heat has abated, there’s a nip in the air, spiders are extruding blankets of webbing, and if you look up into the trees, here and there you see a bit of fall color beginning. Like so many of you, autumn is my favorite season. Time to clean up the detritus of summer – those only semi-successful tomato plants, for example – and to move on to the planting of crocus, bluebells, tulips and daffodils: the dreams of spring. By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.
Casting the Bronze Bust of Dr. Lester Wolfson -- There on the floor was the hand-made barrel-shaped white plaster matrix into which the molten metal would be poured. Near it stood a small furnace with a hole at the top the size of your fist. A stream of yellow flames roared from this hole and had been roaring for a long time. The metal inside was now over 1000 degrees. The sculptor’s wife cautioned us, If anything goes wrong, don’t rush up to help, back away—if it touches you, the bronze will burn right through your body. By Ken Smith.
Complaint Department -- I have struggled to maintain the peace and raise my girls well, but the stress of my days often means by the end of each one I am not the sweetest woman to be around. I often hurl the myriad challenges of my day at my husband as soon as he walks through the door. Sometimes dinner isn't made and the house looks like a toy bomb went off and I feel guilty about it. When I try to explain how the day went down I think it is a lot more like complaining than anything helpful. By Heather Curlee Novak.
Mad Men’s Maddening Style -- Oh, the elegant style of the early 60s. For men: the narrowly tailored suits and knife-thin ties; for women, the pencil skirts with wide cinching belts, the clinging cashmere sweaters punctuated by pearls. Take a look around and it’s clear that this season we are mad about Mad Men – and not just the TV show. Suddenly, in the “ya-gotta-have it” world of merchandizing, the winking vintage sex appeal of the early ’60 is being cranked up to sell upscale mall clothing, batwing eyeliner, and even retro telephone handsets so you can have Bluetooth technology but still look like you’re answering the phone for Don Draper in a red-lipsticked whisper. What the heck is going on? I’m a sucker, myself, for vintage fashion, but I wonder why now – in this political moment – we are hungry for the style of those very conservative “men will be men” and “women will be objects” times. By April Lidinsky.
Mandala -- I remember that year as the spring when my dad roared down the driveway at our home near Emory University in Atlanta in a new Austin Healey, a roadster, the proper name for a British rag-top sports car. This one was red with all the trimmings and served as waterproof glue for the closest period of bonding between a father and son. I say “waterproof” because the top on that car was a tight fit from the start, and had maybe fifty snaps to secure it around the cockpit; and of course after a couple times getting wet it shrunk, so there it stayed, behind the back seat squab—British for the seat’s backrest—for seven years, molding in peace. When it rained we got wet, so we cultivated raincoats and laughing. I didn’t mind a bit. By David James.
Acne Hell -- No one has ever asked me what it was like having a bad case of acne as a teen. It’s a topic that never comes up, partly because the embarrassment never dies. Here I’ll raise the question myself – but don’t worry: I won’t subject you to physical descriptions, except to say that, at seventeen, I would gladly have sacrificed a finger for merely the sort of minor pimple problem of the beautiful girls and boys you see on acne medication commercials. Ah, that embarrassing, isolated red zit! So annoying on an otherwise perfect face! Well, perfection was never a possibility for me, and I had no hope of hiding my condition under a few dabs of makeup. When it came to skin quality, my rival was the full moon. By Joe Chaney.
Categories
Archives and syndication
- By author
- By category
- By date
- RSS 2.0 syndication
- RSS for iTunes
- Technorati Profile