Laurie sent this to me in an email on 5/29/2020
I sat one afternoon on the day sofa reading and happened to notice a lizard high up on the window across the room. I thought it was on the outside of the screen, but when I showed my husband, saying, “It has been there quite a long time,” he replied, going closer, “It is inside the screen. Probably cannot get out.” Concerned, I rose to go and look, and sure enough, the six-inch lizard was six feet off the ground, in between the window and the screen. Carefully, I opened the window and unhooked the screen’s bottom latch, thinking that the lizard might then be able to exit on its own. But when it was still hanging there later in the day, I went outside and pulled the screen outward from the bottom so that it hung from its hinged top to the distance of about a foot and propped it open with a stick. I could clearly see how the lizard had gotten in: the board at the bottom had rotted and the screen material had pulled away because the staples holding it in place had come loose.
Okay, now the lizard, able to escape with more ease, would readily go on its way. When I looked, hours later, it was still there, only not hanging from the mesh material of the screen, but precariously perched on one of the window’s wooden struts that hold the small panes of glass in place. “Well, you silly thing,” I told the lizard. “It would have been much easier to go down the screen or over to the side and make a small leap to the rock wall of the house.” Now, the lizard had its toes gripping a narrow piece of wood with glass all around, on which it scrabbled for footing and finding no purchase, stopped to rest, eyes blinking. It would be a big leap back to the screen, which might harbor the predictable outcome of a fall to the ground. The only choice, really, was for the lizard to make its way to one side or the other, judiciously gripping the wooden strut that was thinner than its own body. I stood there and said a prayer for it, in part because its choices had gotten it into quite serious trouble and I identified with its predicament.
How often had I found an opening into a new and different part of the world—or a relationship–only to find myself trapped with no apparent way of going back out the way I had come in. How often had I made one bad choice after another, meanwhile exhausting myself and hanging on for dear life, mostly wishing that someone would come and save me. I pondered the action of going out to rescue the lizard by grabbing ahold of it with a gloved hand, but I feared that my intrusion into its pathway may well result in injury or death, neither of which I wanted to impart.
I kept checking, trusting that eventually, the lizard would figure out its own way back to a much safer realm, where it could eat, drink, and be with others of its own kind. Seeing it scrabble against the glass made my heart ache and upon each passing, I would say, kindly, “Go sideways you goof!” Finally, it made some progress toward the left side and when it was within a couple of inches of the rock wall (the gulf of open space must surely seem like an abyss to a lizard), I said, “Go! Go! You can do it!” and I tapped the glass behind it and it scurried forward and jumped. There it clung to a more substantial surface and I felt certain that it would be safe.
When I looked again and saw it gone, I went outside to unbrace the screen and put it back in place. The lizard was still there, high up on the rock wall, but seemingly content. Perhaps it needed time and rest to understand that it had indeed escaped a dismal fate and that it would, in time, scurry onward into the rest of its estimable life. For my part, I pushed the rotten board back into place and when I came inside, I patched the loose screen with tape until a more thorough repair could be managed. When I walked past the window this morning while perusing the blackberry bushes and the blue mist flowering to draw in the multitude of butterflies, I saw that the lizard had gone on.
Of course, I smiled. How could I not?