What saved me today - a little memory and a couple of gratitudes

Driving around Newton Creek Park, I remembered the day I was walking there, years ago, and I found two white mice scrambling around the storm drain. They were being circled by birds of prey and I knew it wouldn't be long befoe they would be lunch. Across the street I saw a pile of empty boxes on a porch and I went over and took one. I brought the mice home to my house of FIVE CATS wondering what I would do.

I put them temporarily in a plastic tub with some seeds (I had a lot of seeds from my vegetarian and health food diet, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, etc.) I punctured the tub for air circulation.

I thought I would go to a pet store and buy some kind of habitat but as it happened, at my volunteer job at Red Bank Battlefileld, the young woman who was director at the time, Megan Giordano, had a big and roomy habitat (two foot deep and 4 feet long, 2 feet wide) from mice she had during her college days. It had an island with a palm tree on top! I put a thin layer of sterilized pet straw on the room bottom, and my mice were both safe and happy! The cats pretty much ignored them, at least when I was around.

I really enjoyed watching them, their fast little hands washing their faces, their overjoyed excitement when I put a respbeerry on their island. They groomed one another.

At the time, I kept a different blog, or maybe it was this one, I can't remember, but anyhow, I posted photos of them and people commented on them. One friend wrote and asked how many of them it would take to make a hat, and I replied, a team of 12 because they were union tailors and did only the best quality work!

My little friends lived for two years. One day, on of them, in the midst of the joy of eating a raspberry, clutched its chest and fell over - heart attack The other came over and tried to rouse its friend, but it was hopeless. I buried mouse number one and mouse number two went on a lone survivor on the island. That one died soon after. I read that they don't have a long life spanm (about 2 years) and I don't know where they came from or how old they were when I found them. My guess is that they were released from a school lab or they were released from some house that fed mice to snake pets.

I am grateful that I rescued them and gave them the good life they enjoyed and the fun they provided to me and those who read about them. Whenever I turn the corner at that park, driving now, not walking as i am so old and disabled, I think of those two little fur people.

On Friday, this weekend, I feel I was in danger of a heart atttack myself. While out to lunch, I made the mistake of ordering raspberry ice tea, thinking it was an herbal tea - raspberry but it is not. It is black tea with a flavored sugar syrup. That night I had the most horrible heart pounding breathlessness, arrhythmia, palpittions - it felt like my chest would burst. I ate an 80mg baby aspirin and took one of my blood pressure pills and did yoga brathing to slow my heart for the pills to kick in. It took 8 hours and i had not 5 minutes of sleep. My heart is very susceptible to caffeine stimulants. Next day, I slept all day. On Sunday, my heart had returned to normal but my head felt clogged and foggy. I was afraid I had done some damage.

Fortunately, each day that passed, I got better. It is now Wednesday. I took the dog for a walk at Proprietor's Park and we drove around Knight's Park in Collingswood and then Newton Creek Park and I rememered the mice.

I am so grateful to be alive and well again on this beautiful, breezy and mild summer day. It is perfumed and made magical by the summers past and the whole intoxicating air of summer itself. There were waves on the Delawre River when we walked at Proprietor's Park. I met some nice people walking and picnicing there.

The heart episode left me depressed. It is so difficult being OLD - I can't hear and my new hering aids make my ears itch unbearably. I can't see. I walk like tin man without his oil can. I was full of despair at the thought of how much more decline I would be forced to endure. But then, I got outside! I got in the car, walked the dog and drove around the parks looking at beauty and the trees. Sometimes I worry about the upcoming likelihood that I will no longer be able to drive, but then I think I will just walk around the neighborhood and enjoy the miracles there - the new spring flowers in the lawns before they get cut in spring, the colored leaves that carpet the yards in fall, the first snowflakes, Christmas lights ans wreaths.

My newest old statement of intention is to walk outside EVERY DAY no matter what! Well, maybe not in a smoke emergency or 90 degree weather or iced sidewalks but every other day! Get out and about! Be in the world outside the house! That was what saved me and gave me even the small urge to write this blog!

Happy Trails!

wrightj45@yahoo.com