When I Feel Small

by Melissa Rogers

“At the center of the wood, on the silted and soiled floor of the woods, among the shadows of the moony night, she went about her still unfinished task of staying alive.”

— in Wendell Berry’s Whitefoot

I feel small sometimes in these days of “I am woman. Hear me roar.” Sometimes I feel less lioness and more Wendell Berry’s Whitefoot mouse. In Wendell Berry’s short story, Whitefoot is your typical fastidious field mouse living in her small acre of world. She forages and works each day to care for and protect herself and her little place that she has attentively prepared. Then one day she is suddenly set adrift, swirling and rushing down the river flood, clinging desperately to a log, being dragged along to places she never meant to go.

I feel that swirling and rushing and clinging and dragging. As a mom of four kids, I feel it in my bones at 4am when I’m awake in panic over some imagined-but-real fear. I feel it as a teacher in my classroom. I feel it as a citizen. I feel it as me, and there is so much to be afraid of in these roiling days. There’s something new to dread daily in the socials and news reports I read, all so much bigger than me. I freeze and want to shut my eyes to it all.

From my safe leather sofa, I read of the other side of the world trying to exterminate itself. The bombs fall and fall and fall. If I am brave, I watch the news. Nearer by, the waves and wind and rain drown roads and shops and homes and sweep away some other town’s lives and livelihoods. A coast catches fire, and the flames eat whole forests and whole neighborhoods. I download the app to keep an eye out for them. And the powers at the top play bully games of reverse red rover and dodgeball to the death with someone else’s kids. What can I do?

I am afraid that if I let it all break my heart, I’ll have to step into those people’s shoes, soggy with tears and blood and ash. Then it would stain my socks, and the hate and grief might swallow me whole. I am already so small and so afraid. Eventually, though, won’t Whitefoot’s flood come for me somehow, to steal away my nest I’ve built, to leave me shivering and unshielded? Is it coming even now, muscling in with its unbridled power? What can I do? I am so small. Maybe, though, just maybe, it’s ok to face the fear as a small Whitefoot mouse does. “The little life she had, she loved dearly, and so far she had taken excellent care of it.” Maybe, just maybe, love and care can be my tenacity in these days. Maybe with eyes wide like Whitefoot‘s to see the suffering of others and ears open like hers to listen and learn, we all can cling to the place we find ourselves, love it dearly, and do the next thing we can to take excellent care of each other, ourselves, and “the little world of what [we] know.” Maybe small is ok, too.