Short Stories

The Color of Coffee with Cream

When my youngest daughter was dying of cancer at age 27, she lived with me the last two months of her life. Her sister and I took care of her 24 hours a day. Her sister stayed nights with her so I could sleep and I took days. She was on so many medications toward the end, six morphine patches and medicines that I belive actually finished her life before the cancer could.... there were so many and so much of them. She had reactions to so many of them so we had to watch her so closely.

Her eyesight became a problem toward the end. She started seeing things that weren't really there. We just went along with whatever she was seeing and never let her think that she was "seeing things" but one day she called me in there with a real problem. There were mice running all over her bedroom floor. Of course there were none in her room or in the house anywhere. I asked her where she saw one. I asked her where he ran. I asked her if there was more than one. I followed through to make her feel better. I asked her what color they were and she said they were the same color as the carpet. The carpet color, as best I can describe it to you, was the color of "coffee with cream" She told me that "One just ran under the table"...."There are two over there in the corner"...."There's one right there" and "One just ran under my bed" To make her feel better, I got on my hands and knees and crawled all around the floor in her bedroom and made sure that all of the mice were gone. I crawled under tables, I crawled to look under the bed. I crawled all over that room until they were all gone. It was heartbreaking but much worse to tell her that she was just imagining them.

So now my story skips and goes to several months later....I had buried my precious child but was left with her two sons to try to raise, ages nine and twelve. How on earth to do that, especially in my grief? The only thing I knew to do was get them into counseling, all sports I could think of, "Big Brothers, Big Sisters" organization, buy skateboards, paint guns, game programs for their television, I think I tried everything.

Then one day, one of the boys asked me if they could have hamsters. To me, anything that was contained in a container was okay. I only had one specification...that the hamsters had to be the fluffy, black and white spotted ones. I refused to have slick haired ones that looked like rats. I knew a lady that raised them and specified exactly what I wanted for them. The day she delivered them, they were not at all what I had ordered. They were RATS, I don't care if they were called hamsters or not, these little slick haired suckers were baby MICE or worse. They looked more like mice than mice could. She didn't charge me for them and the boys wanted them, so I was stuck with them. We put the two males in an aquarium and put a plastic thing on top that was designed for something else but it was a waffle looking thing so they could get air (like I really cared at that point) so they couldn't escape. (I guess I need to mention that they were the color of coffee with cream)

It seems like it took less than a month for the males (I wished they were both males) to decide to breed and then we had hamsters running out our ears (except that they were in that container) That wasn't enough but they bred again....and the poor aquarium overflowed. They were getting so out of hand that I put a brick on top of the plastic makeshift cover to keep them in. What had I gotten myself into?

One night, I finally got up the nerve to actually leave the house and go out on the town with a friend. The boys were spending the night with their Aunt, I had no curfew and hadn't been out of the house in so long. It was about midnight when I got home. It wasn't the first thing I noticed but pretty close. The stupid hamsters had managed to push the top off the aquarium, brick and all and all of them were gone. Now I had a project. I didn't want them running rampant all over the house. I also didn't want the boys to come home and find them "gone" so I had to find them and put them back.

Their "home" was in the den on the brick hearth. After looking for quite a while in there, close to their "home", I found none. I also found none in the kitchen where any food smells might have taken them. I found none in the baths or laundry room, thinking they were looking for a water source. This was a three bedroom, two bath home with seperate dining room. I could not figure out where they went or why I couldn't see even one of them. I checked bedrooms, every room...nothing. I then went into the bedroom I usually tried to stay out of, where my daughter had died and I kept the door closed. There were hamsters everywhere.....under the table, under the bed, in the corners, absolutely running everywhere. I picked one up. I gathered another one up, I finally had to get down on my hands and knees and look and reach under the table, the bed, all of the places they were. While I was on the floor, crawling around on my knees, it occurred to me that this was exactly what Tracy had seen. me doing when SHE saw them, on my knees, gathering up "mice" that were the same color of the carpet....The color of coffee with cream.

What I will always wonder....Did she see me on my knees doing this before it happened? Did she see hamsters that were the color she described, before we even had them, thinking they were mice? Why were they ALL (about 12 of them) in that ONE bedroom, her's, instead of all over the house? None were missing. None were found anywhere except in her bedroom. There was no food, no water, nothing in that room that would have drawn any animal toward it. Of course, being a bereaved Mom.....I have my answer. You can make of this what you will.