Mouse of My Heart

It’s Valentine’s Day and I’ve rolled out a brown paper table runner “restaurant style.” While I prepare a special dinner, Olivia* doodles a picture of the workings of her heart, a fun mapping activity I’ve been testing out all week. When I turn around, I notice that most of the space in her heart map is taken up by a cat and a mouse. She tells me again how much she ADORED her cat, but I’m curious about the mouse. As if reading my mind, and without a moment’s hesitation, Olivia begins reciting:

Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,

O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!

Thou need na start awa sae hasty,

Wi’ bickerin brattle!

I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee

Wi’ murd’ring pattle!

I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion

Has broken Nature’s social union,

An’ justifies that ill opinion,

Which makes thee startle,

At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,

An’ fellow-mortal!

She continues right through to the end before explaining that what I’ve had the great pleasure of hearing is one of her favourite poems, To a Mouse by Robert Burns. I must admit that we’re both left shaking.

“Did I just remember that?”, Olivia asks me in equal disbelief to what I’m experiencing. “The poem was in my heart all along, and it came back to me when I needed it.”

It’s a week later, and when I return Olivia is bursting again with poetry. The pot of bulbs I left on her table is now blooming, and I’m being introduced to William Wordsworth’s Daffodils:

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

The last paragraph gives me reason to pause, as it spells out the staying power of a poetry prescription: 

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

Olivia reminds me that “you have to have it memorized and stored in your inward eye to feel its effect.” I’m sent home with the instructions to write out my favourite poem every day it until it sticks. Olivia tells her sons that not only will it safeguard my memory, but it’s good for my overall well-being. By sharing the gift of poetry we’re caring for each other and caring for our memories, and the mouse has taken up residency in both our hearts.

For mapping ideas, including heart maps, check out this Creative Companionship selection, How to Make Hand-Drawn Maps: A Creative Guide with Tips, Tricks, and Projects by Helen Cann.

*Name changed for privacy.