the Olympic midnight mouse, and the romance of it all

As much as I love the Olympics—Missy Franklin's smile, Ally Raisman's fortitude, Bolt's bolts, Oscar Pistorius, Misty and Keri, the Call Me Maybes, Michael Phelps, the super divers, Mo Farah, royal fashions, travelogues, the roar of contained fire—I feel a hint of relief when the games come to an end.  Life will return to what life was.  I'll read more in the evening.

Last night, my husband having persuaded me to watch the Brazil-USA women's volleyball final, I wandered into the pantry late and there, three shelves up, its nose in a box of crackers, was a furry gray thing.  It didn't move, but I—an inveterate neat freak, an everyday housecleaner, and yet a woman (it is true) who had let her pantry go these past two weeks—screamed.

I've never had a pantry mouse before.

There were decisions to be made.  Who can kill a furry thing?  Who can let it stay?  In time, the mouse scurried down the wall and hid beneath the paper bags I had meant to recycle a good two weeks ago.  From there it made a bee line for the dining room and proceeded, for the next 60 minutes to creatively dash and hide.  This was a smart mouse, an Olympic mouse.  It clung to the denuded pipes of the old radiator.  It hid beneath a dish.  It zigged when we zagged and zagged when we zigged.  It did not wish to be caught.

It was a minor drama.  We needed strategies, quick.  I barricaded.  My husband broomed.  I dug an old shoe box out of my son's room, which can be counted on for many a thing that should have been recycled months ago.  Dash, then silence.  Tail, then scream.  I stood on a chair for a courage-free five minutes while it ran beneath me.  My husband would never do such a thing.

In the end, the mouse was shoe boxed and carried outside.  In the end, those errant paper bags were recycled and every open box discarded (there were only three) and I scoured every surfaced touched by mouse.  In the end, too, there was the exhilaration, perhaps even the romance, of having teamed in such savvy fashion with my husband.  We weren't just watching the Olympics this time.  We had our own starring roles.  It's the closest I've come to an adventure this summer.

Maybe I need a vacation.

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Peaceable Kingdom

It seems most everyone I know has paused and allowed themselves to be transcended by these '08 Olympic games.

"We stay up all night to watch and sleep in late.... It's so nice," my novelist friend Jennie Nash writes. "It is constantly astounding to me to watch what the human body can do," writes a dear dancer-friend who herself has done the near impossible, soared and spun on national (presidential, even) stages. Our French friends were here on Friday night, speaking of Michael Phelps. My emails are full of did-you-see's? Last night a friend joined us for dinner and it wasn't the dinner that mattered so much as what happened afterward and who we got to see—the impeccably dignified (there is no underestimating her dignity) Shawn Johnson, the explosive 100 meter track-and-field women, the fearless Chinese divers. Dessert was the calm and good feeling of this shared odyssey, this honoring of the exceptional, the sacrificed for, the achieved.

Put a Michael Phelps into an Olympics game, give us Lezak magic or Nastia Liukin grace, give the diplomatic Aaron Piersol a moment to speak, and we become, through them, and just for an instant, somehow saved. We become believers in forces so much greater than ourselves, which is a balming brand of faith.

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