In my basement, there is

a closet. Backpacks, two milk crates of electrical nuisance, more bags, a wooden rack that used to hold coffee mugs decades ago, in a kitchen in Chicago, in New Jersey, in Connecticut and now hold wine - wines I bought when my children were born, wines with Marilyn Monroe's image, wines that I hope to consume with family and friends in absolute celebration.

And a snapped trap.

Yes. A mouse trap. I happen upon it, after having put the trap there many weeks ago. I open the door, assuming nothing. Nothing is what I have become accustomed to. The bait, the stern steel bar, the block of wood, undisturbed.

Disturbed.

We can all use a little disturbance. A jar. A wake.

I sit here tonight beside the same closet door (my feet propped on an empty briefcase from my tiger lady days of the late 80's). This life is better.

Except for the snapped trap which hold a grey mouse body. I do not see it well and close the door on the demise as soon as I can, defeating detail. I am not good at seeing some things. And this is not necessary for me to see. I have seen enough.

My first thought is that I can do it - get the tongs, a paper bag, search the woods, find a place to leave this gentle creature in the woods to go to dust. But I do not want to open the door again, to really see this little being. If I see it, it will not leave me. I will have to carry it. Right now, it is a grey smudge, almost nothing, a non-familiar, not identified, splash of grey, and no, I remember now, was it mostly white, with grey at the sides, dressed as if for a morning wedding, a grey morning tux? Too much.

I leave the house. I have errands, places to be, things to do that will leave the closet closed. The closet is closed. I buy the paint, get the greeting cards, drop off the old bible to the original owner who will want the pages hand-written beginning in 1888 with births, marriages, deaths. There are even directions to the cemetery where the child, less than one year old, rests His mother needs them to know. They need to know. We all need to know. What it means to be here. We all need to be here.

Later, I come home, find my son. Dylan, I say. I need you to do something for me. It is a man thing. It is what men do. I need you to get rid of the mouse in the closet.

Dylan, his dark eyes do not blink often, says, "Okay." I tell him I will get a paper bag, a rubber glove, tongs if he wants them. He can put the whole thing in the bag and walk it into the woods.

He says, "I don't need the tongs."

I arrive downstairs just as he has dropped the mouse into the paper bag. "Let me see," I say.
"No." He fold the bag over.
"C'mon. I can do it," I say.
"No." he says. "You don't really want to see." He walks towards the back door, down the trail to the woods. He does not concede or discuss.

See how he becomes a man. He is right. I don't really want to see, not in a way that I have to really see.

As I write this, on the desk that we share, on the computer that belongs to him, this is what I think you should know:
- there is a copy of Hermann Hesse's novel Steppenwolf (if you have never read it, you may as well do it now), a graduation card from Uncle David and Aunt Sue, a steel slide thing guitar players use, headphones, a harmonica, a pencil only two and a half inches long but sharpened, his iPod charging, a tambourine, and speakers, printer, music mixer. This is the boy becoming the man - he took the mouse away today. What will he be able to do tomorrow?