What if you are enough?

Behind my desk, something tiny and tailed, a little purse of fear, huddles. Metaphor or mouse?

Both.

I live in poet-mind the way a trout lives in river-rush, both of us looking through a liquid lens that shapes how we see what lies beyond the flow.

A mouse is a mouse, a one-of-a-kind living being. She’s real … and unbelievably cute, her eyes like drops of oil, dark and iridescent and full of a history I’ll never hear.

And yet, because we both know fear, know it without even needing the word fear, she’s a metaphor slipped in through some unseen gap, first, into this room, then into my thoughts.

What fear hides in the room of you? Poet-mind asks. Funny to think of one’s self as room, a human room within this physical room.

My two cats, a Tabby boy and a Torti girl, sit in wild awareness, listening and looking and waiting.

I crouch with a flashlight to look between my desk and the wall for something furry that isn’t balls of dust and webs.

“If you’re going to be curious, you need to steer clear of claws,” I whisper to my new little friend.

I don’t see her, but I know she’s there somewhere. Not just because the cats are anxious clues and I watched her scuttle by my feet and into a dark recess, out of reach. I feel her, imagining her miniature mouse heart beating fast, her mousy adrenaline rising, the fear in her that’s keeping her on her tiny mouse toes, alert and alive.

You know, one of the purposes of fear is to keep us alert and alive.

Unlike you and me, I doubt this mouse is mentally beating herself up for what she should or shouldn’t have done, some series of choices she made, her inability to elude the inevitable face of death looking at her as she wonders, “Is this it?”

For her, no regrets and self-rebukes reliving themselves in a mind that, if left unchecked, can manufacture awful thoughts faster than wildfire spreading through dry grass.

No, she’s pure being. There’s no thought or plan or haunting memory in her mouse-mind. She’s being.

All of her wisdom is in her animal body (there’s much wisdom in ours, too, though we forget that).

She’s paying attention to what she sees, hears, and smells, feeling her place in a strange nook, sensing her options with whiskers that touch the texture of each moment in ways we can’t.

What fear hides in the room of you? Ah, that inner voice again.

Let’s see.

How about seeing my husband decline further, knowing almost everything is out of my control but being kind and patient and simply being present with him as death leans in a little more each day? And even those acts that seem so within my control, can be surprisingly challenging at times.

Am I enough for him? Am I enough for me who needs to live my journey now and to keep on going afterwards?

Do you know the fear of being not-enough? I’ve come to believe that’s one of the deepest fears that huddles within all of us.

This week I was in a few conversations with women grieving the loss of someone they love, have lost, and profoundly long for. Each of their losses, their pain, was wholly unique to them, though like a thread woven throughout a garment, there was this thread of not-enough-ness binding together these differing stories.

My mother was a quilter, so as I listen to each story of loss, I see it as another bit of colorful fabric added to a complex pattern that looks chaotic and confusing up close and on it’s own. It’s only when you step back that you see how each piece combines into one, unified creation.

So I see the threads of not-enough-ness as well as hurt and loneliness, the despair of what’s gone forever, and not knowing what’s next.

Then I step back, take a broader view. There’s the whole quilt, and it conveys this: “We’re still here. We’re trying our best. We’re not alone. And there’s so much more than we can see in ourselves, which is why we need each other— to see each other.”

I’m sitting with this thought, as I hear a faint click.

I’d wedged a small, green, plastic mouse trap, something of a cross between tunnel and cave, at the edge of wall and desk, with a shard of cashew as an incentive for Miss Mousie to enter.

Surprise! There she is, sniffing the cashew, then her nose scanning the curved roof and green-clouded walls of her new environment.

Tabby boy has gone off to nap, though Torti girl is gushing with delight, standing up on two legs, as I lift the trap and she sees Miss Mousie scuttling back and forth inside.

I carry trap and deer mouse out back, under a redwood tree. After settling the green cave amid some salal leaves and autumn-rusty fern fronds, I lift the gate at the end of the trap.

She pauses in the opening, sizing up the situation, then takes a stunningly far and high leap into freedom. She starts to run, then pauses again, under a fallen redwood limb, her whiskers wet from leftover rain coating everything.

She looks back and up at me, and I smile at her. “Do you understand a human smile, Little One?”

I want to believe she does. But who can know? I hope she sees me as a kind giant in her world, who saw her, cared about her, helped her find her way back into the world and her ‘what’s next.’

Isn’t that enough?

And you, reading this, can you see how you, too, are a kind giant in someone’s world?