GrowingOlderHopeWiser

We have all heard the saying about the elephant in the room. I have a short story about the tiny mouse in my room and the unexpected friendship that followed.

The minute little critter, a soft, tiny ball of gray hair, sat near the lonely, bored 10-year-old, under the care of two elderly Victorian-era Great Aunts. At first, he was timid, but then he grew bolder. The after-school routine continued for a while. He was like a secret friend and a confidant. “Elizabeth, your playtime is over, and television is allowed only in the evening,” I heard from the kitchen, where my Aunt Mary was busy preparing tonight’s dinner. She had no idea about my choice of this little friend. I bonded with the tiny mouse in my room, where I spent my time picking out and spinning 45s on the small record player on the cool linoleum floor. The walls of my room were plastered with smiling faces of every teen idol heartthrob popular in the mid-1960s. The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork. Bobby Sherman, David Cassidy, Donny Osmond, and Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits. And a few unusual, not-so-teen idols like Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock from Star Trek), Basil Rathbone (Sherlock Holmes), and Jonathan Frid (Collins from Dark Shadows). I was very proud of my collection.

I never named the mouse and had no idea of its gender, but this little critter often hung out with me—it was unafraid of me.

One freezing morning in New York, I slipped on my Keds, which I wore like slippers, with the heels mashed flat. I remember sitting on the toilet, minding my business, when I felt movement in the toe of my shoe. The tiny mouse had crawled into my Keds for warmth. Of course, I jumped up screaming, but only because it startled me. When I saw it was my friend, I relaxed.

Keds circa 1960s

Watching television in the evening was another time when my tiny mouse would come out and sit near me, watching the TV. He would stay there for a long while. I had to argue with my aunts about whether this little critter was my friend. Aunt Julia was horrified each time she saw him. I feared she would try to kill him. Aunt Mary looked away from many things, like the teen idols on my bedroom walls, but this was really testing her patience. Aunt Julia, on the other hand, was not so lenient. She would argue with me all the time and storm off to her room whenever Aunt Mary interfered.

The Tiny Mouse in the room that roared

The metaphorical elephant represents an obvious problem or difficult situation that people avoid discussing. For me, the tiny mouse in the room represented what I did not want to talk about. 

Although I was comfortable, well cared for, and loved by my Great Aunts, I was still very lonely and missed my mother and family, who were now scattered to the winds. After my parents’ separation, my mother could not handle it at first and lost her sense of direction; she would disappear for days, leaving her four children with a ninety-year-old great-grandmother who was very frail. I was 7 when my younger sister was 1, and my older brothers were 10 and 8. On one of these fateful occasions, my mother disappeared. I had early release from school; my brothers did not want to take me home, and my mother was not around, so I sat in the school office being interrogated about where she was. Being a typical, honest 7-year-old, I said I had not seen Mom for 2 days, that we had bad, smelly food on the stove, and that my great-grandma cried a lot. 

We ended up separated as a family. My brothers went to live with my grandfather, my sister stayed with my mother, and I stumbled from house to house until I landed at my great-aunt’s place. Aunt Mary became my official Guardian.
The tiny mouse in the room represented my untold, unspoken loneliness as a child, missing my family.