He’s trying to stop my frantic pacing. I’m sick and having the umpteenth panic attack that day.
Still, in my fear-induced haze, I know what he’s talking about. The Tom and Jerry cartoons. Jerry’s diaper-wearing cousin, looking in the mirror, giving himself the pep talk of a lifetime. “I’m a musketeer!“
But faced with his enemy in combat, he runs for his life. For he’s only a mouse.
And whilst I might be a mouse too, my father is a musketeer, forever fighting the scariest threat: his daughters’ suffering.