Mouse in Amaze

In which our Hero finds a mouse in the wild and decides to feed it

Had lunch with the Mouse yesterday. She goes to university at my alma mater, and my “lunch” happened an hour before her free time started, so I headed down on the subway and got to relive my old commute. Things I’ve forgotten: exactly where to stand to position myself by the best exit. Things I still remember: The window of that pancake place is the best spot to see around the corner if a streetcar is coming. Also, after about 8 went the other way, I realized, there really were no streetcars coming, and thinking how little has changed since I was doing this regularly, I started hiking that last stretch.

As I approached our meeting point, one of the many new and refurbed buildings on campus, I wondered how I’d find her. And then a young pretty woman slipped out through the doors and I smiled as I recognized her. She took me on a little tour of her faculty building, and I was delighted to see “home base,” the place she comes back to, to study and hang out. And then we hiked all the way back I’d come to have lunch at a diner since she couldn’t think of when she’d tried that.

She got me talking. I’m impressed at how easily she did that. But she asked me to explain what I do, and I tried, again. (Oddly enough, she seems to get the idea of being an expert in figuring things out, so maybe that’s the new line to pursue as far as defining myself for other people) And I told her about going independent. Mentioning interviewing led to her picking my brain about what it’s like to interview.

I’d only planned to take about two hours for lunch. And I was already late because we’d taken the tour. And I was right next to my subway stop, too. And she’s twenty now (which is still new enough to sit uncomfortably on her shoulders, never mind that if she’s twenty, then I’m so staggeringly *not*), and she’s been making the long commute from home to classes for years on her own. But my Mouse slipped her hand into mine as unselfconsciously as always, and I walked my little girl back to school after her lunch.