Little Purple Mouse

My parents have an interesting kind of love. They love each other intensely and after thirty years of marriage have become so close they cannot live without the other. Their marriage is the defining aspect of their lives. Last year my dad went in for a routine surgery that did not go so routine. It was a rough procedure and even though he wasn’t put all the way out he was still heavily sedated. When they brought us back to see him, he was in obvious pain, completely exhausted, and still out of it. After Mom kissed him he held up his left and indicated he wanted her to put back on his wedding ring.

There was something so simple and profound about that moment. Thirty years of marriage to his true love made it so that, even when he was hurting and groggy, he did not feel right without that symbol. I got a small taste of that feeling of a partner and mine only lasted fifteen months. I can’t imagine three decades of that sort of love and partnership.

One year for some gift giving holiday, Dad bought Mom a little glass purple mouse. It has the big round cartoon ears and a cute little smile. It looks like it is going to scamper off at any second and cause mischief. She didn’t quite know how to take it.  He told her that it was the perfect representation of how he felt about her. (Yes, my parents talk like that. I blame them for my inability to talk to kids my age when I was young.) He told her that when he looked at it, he thought of her. It made him deeply, purely happy.

My mom has made my dad many gifts over the years. She made him a Buzz Lightyear lunchbox when she could find on in the stores. She has done a drawing of most of his dogs that have been in our house. One year she drew many little purple mouses and put them with his packed lunches and hid them various places just to let him know she loved him. He calls that mouse the most important gift he ever gave mom.

She (the mouse) has a chip in her ear now. Somehow it makes her even more of a perfect symbol for my parents relationship. She sits on a window sill beside the Hilary Clinton nutcracker that Mom bought Dad poised smiling and ready to create havoc.

Sometimes it is the simple things that show us so much about other people if we take the time to look at them. These little insights into the people in our lives are such profound little gifts.