Dear Diary:
Last week, all of a sudden, an army of ugly and scary mice invaded our beloved fortress in Yorkville. An old but newly renovated apartment, spacious and silent, was no longer ours but theirs.
I spent several days barricading myself in my son’s room while our enemies fell into traps. On Friday, as a final battle approached once the exterminator had closed all holes, I took my 3-year-old son and escaped to Brooklyn, where my cousins hosted us for the weekend. Two big cats guard their beautiful brownstone.
It was a perfect refuge, until we fell down their steep staircase on Saturday morning. Trying to calm myself and my son, we watched old Mickey Mouse movies. I told my mostly Spanish-speaking son, “Look, Alfonso, Minnie is a queen.â€
“Oh,†he said. “Minnie lives in Queens.†Missing his world, he asked me a hundred times when we were going back to Manhattan and when he could see his nanny Toña, who lives in the Bronx.
Back in our reconquered fortress, I watch him play with his buses and tell their little passengers that he fell down the stairs in the Brooklyn Bridge, that it doesn’t hurt anymore, and that we came back home in a black Arecibo taxi.
Soon we’ll move south. I haven’t told my little New Yorker yet. I fear his reaction more than any mice.
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