incident with a lizard

A few days ago, in the late afternoon, I swung the door open to the porch. Eleanor, just a few feet behind me, stopped at the door as I was saying to her that I needed to check the tiles (they are often too hot for bare feet after baking in the sun all day). As I bent down just in front of the door, facing the tiles, I felt something hit my head and seconds later saw a lizard scurrying toward the opposite side of the chimney. I don't know if he was drunk, dared by his friends, or just lost his footing, but it scared the crap out of me (and rightly so, I think) and I screamed. This, in turn, made Eleanor scared and she started to cry. After a few moments of comforting and reassurance that the lizard was all gone, she stopped. But she still wanted nothing to do with the porch.

The event must have been pretty dramatic, maybe even traumatic, for her; since that day, and several times each day, she seems to relive it. She points to the door and says "Ahhh, ahhh" with rising and falling intonation while using the "all done" sign. She then points to my head, and says all done once again. Sometimes I think that first "ahhh, ahhh" is her imitating my scream, which is equally funny in its own right. Everytime we go to the porch she does the same thing, and now there's an extra pause while she waits for me to tell her that it's safe to come out. There are no lizards falling from the sky.

It's strange to think that in no time this will be a forgotten memory for Eleanor, and all we'll have left is this blog post to remind us of that "incident with a lizard."
-kjd