Mice and Cookies

Almost sixteen years ago, before I was even pregnant, a friend with a one year old (who was also the friend who helped me handle morning sickness once I was pregnant) introduced me to the children's book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. I remember thinking how funny it was, and how much I loved the pictures. It was an easy read when I read to her son, and I think I bought my own copy before my daughter was even born. It wasn't until much later that I discovered it was not just a genius children's book. It was a complete reflection of my life (and perhaps any mother's life) with kids. In the book, what starts as a simple request turns into a whole day's worth of chain reaction events. A cookie needs milk, milk needs a straw, a milk mustache needs a napkin--you get the picture--and before you know it, the mouse and his human companion have gone on a whole series of adventures. The concept has been so popular that there are now many spin-offs from the book, each with its own chain reaction day.
 
My days are very often these kinds of chain reactions, perhaps just with fewer crazy events, and with children instead of cute illustrated animals. But the frequency with with which one child request kicks off a variety of tasks or journeys makes me laugh at the fact that I ever read the Mouse book as just a cute children's story.
 
Today, my having let one daughter go to a sleepover knowing she'd have Saturday karate turned into a subway trip to pick her up and a stop at a deli to feed her because I'd been so wrapped up in what train to take that I hadn't packed breakfast. The deli stop caused just enough of a delay to make us late for karate, which caused me to be late for a meeting (and her to have to do pushups), and the day continued from there. I won't take you through all of it--it would just make you as tired as I am (there's actually a picture of the exhausted human companion at the end of the Mouse book!) Suffice it to say that almost every day of my life, I understand why these books ring so true to us as we read them to our kids.
 
It's hard to believe it's been so long since I discovered that crazy Mouse. But, even now, the thought of him keeps me smiling when my days continue to be an awful lot like his!