Life-Everlasting

In New Hampshire, in the mid-eighties, one of my pet mice was resurrected from the dead.  I think my personality makes much more sense, if you just always keep this in mind.

One morning I found my mouse dead.  I wrapped him in a Woody Woodpecker washcloth in preparation for burial and laid the corpse back down in the cage.  It was entirely too cold for the mice on the porch in the New Hampshire winter, but my dad wouldn’t let the mice live inside.  They were male mice and they stank.

I admit I didn’t like this mouse much.  It bit.  I think I’d killed several mice already by then, with winter as my accomplice.

After preparing the corpse for burial, I went upstairs and read the entire book of Genesis.  In those days, if faced with trouble, I read a book.  (Unlike now when, if a problem becomes apparent, I promptly seize hold of the situation and take small common-sense steps in order, oh fierce pragmatist that I am.)

At that time I was maybe ten, my mother was dead, I had horrific nightmares every night, and I hadn’t slept with my light off since the Carter administration.  I read from the Bible because I believed the Bible would protect me from terrors.  I’m not talking about Christ or the afterlife; I read because I believed that holding the Bible would protect me right there and then.

I read all forty-six chapters of Genesis and returned downstairs to find the mouse gnawing away at his shroud.

Please keep this in mind when you see me curled up in the corner with some book no reasonable person would read.  Dreamily reading when I really ought to be doing something more sensible, especially at this age, past forty.

Have patience, please.  I am probably attempting to resurrect some mouse or another.