Hi Friends,
When I was a little girl one of the things I most loved to play with was my mouse house. I hated it when friends would call it a doll house, because I didn’t like playing with dolls. Instead, I collected little furry mice with various outfits. I had a bride and groom, a scholar, a maid and a butler—mice in pink dresses and mice in business attire and mice holding a kernel of corn. I created a well-decorated home for these mice, complete with a clock that kept time and a grand piano that played. I wasn’t obsessed with creating make-believe lives for the mice. Rather, I was obsessed with rearranging the furniture and decorating, and my early taste favored a maximalist approach—plants and rugs and artwork on the walls; in other words, so much clutter, and some might say (including my husband) that some things never change.
When my mother died, I decided it was time to give up this childhood prized possession, and I gave it to a friend’s daughter. I hoped the girl would cherish it as much as I did. A couple years after that, her mother told me her daughter was done with it, and asked if I wanted her to donate it. I told her I would take the furniture and the mice and pass them along to another friend’s kids. I couldn’t stand the thought of all those beautiful things I had carefully collected going to the Goodwill.
My friend left the furniture and the mice in a Target bag on my front porch, and when I opened it, I discovered that most of the mice had been ripped apart and destroyed. The scholar’s glasses and scrolls were missing, the bride’s eyes had been plucked out, her veil missing. Some of the mice were without their outfits; others were missing noses and ears. I wrote to my friend, wondering if their family dog had gotten to them. She told me that no, they were like that when I gave them to her, which I knew