My Mother's Misguided Childhood

It being Mother's Day this week, I thought about what stories I could tell about my mother. If I never post again, it's because I have been grounded.

My mother grew up on a farm in a home that had no indoor bathroom. She told us many times how whenever it rained, my grandfather would have to go get the tractor to bring the outhouse back because it had been washed away to a neighboring field.

Once, when my mother was a little girl, she was playing in the barn when she found a nest of mice among the bales of hay. Understandably, when mice were found it was a rule that they should be destroyed as the bane of a farmer's existence that they were. My mother, however, couldn't bear the thought of anything happening to the tiny little newborn mice, and decided to make them pets. She went and got a little plastic container to make a home for them, padding it with some hay, and left it in a safe place so that it wouldn't be discovered.

That night, it rained, and when my mother went back the next day- probably while my grandfather was off fetching the outhouse back- she found that rainwater had leaked into her safe place, and filled up the plastic container. All the baby mice had drowned.