Saying Goodbye

In 1962, my parents moved us to the country, and into their new dream house, a three-bedroom ranch in the middle of a six-acre alfalfa field.   Mom and Dad had designed and built the house to their specifications, which included a family room with a fireplace, two bathrooms, a storm cellar (which doubled as a bomb shelter), and a study for Dad.   The house seemed so vast (even to Dad) that he installed an intercom system, which connected every room except those two bathrooms.   

            I’d just turned eight and was finishing second grade when we moved to the country that spring, and suddenly everything seemed different.    No longer could I run next-door to Nana and Papa’s or play paper dolls with Trudy and Renee or slip up the street to help Alma gather eggs from her hens.  Out in the country, our nearest neighbors (who lived acres away) were older than Nana and Papa.  There was no one to play with—except my little sister. 

            Nights were longer.  Days were quieter.  The woods behind the barn (which Dad had built himself from concrete blocks) seemed dark, mysterious, and wild.   It felt like we were on our own, far away from all that had been safe and familiar.  Who knew what might happen next in such a lonely, big, and maybe even dangerous place?  

The Guest Bedroom Closet

Now all these years later, I don’t remember why I was in the guest bedroom on that particular morning in 1962.  Maybe I had volunteered to arrange figurines on the what-not shelf, or maybe Mom had sent me to look for something in the closet.  But I’ll never forgot what I saw, sticking out underneath the closet door:  a long, thin, blue tail.  And the tail flicked back and forth. 

Its shape and texture reminded me of the rubbery plastic worms in Papa’s tackle box, the ones he sometimes let me play with.  But the color of that tail—a vivid, royal blue—was unlike any of Papa’s fishing lures.   Just as I reached for the tail, it flicked again.  And I drew back.   Something undeniably alive was attached to that tail.   

So, I jumped to what seemed then to be the only logical conclusion: that long, thin, blue tail surely belonged to a snake—and it was in the house!    Something like this would never  have happened in town.

By then, Mom had arrived—so had my sister.  We stood several feet away from the closet door, staring in disbelief.  Finally, Mom said, “I’ll call Dad.”   She shooed us out of the guest room and closed the door behind her.   

It seemed to take forever for Dad to get home from work.  He rushed into the house and threw open the guest bedroom door.   And there it was—several inches of blue tail still attached to something inside the closet!

Dad’s expression softened, and I think he even chuckled when he saw that tail.  Slowly he opened the closet door, and there it was—a skinny, blue-tailed lizard, making itself perfectly at home.  In our new home. 

Further Reptilian Encounters

In the years that followed, we had more reptilian encounters—but all of them with snakes.  There was the sunny, summer afternoon when Mom looked out the sliding glass door and calmly said, “Girls, there’s a snake on the patio.”

The snake was big and black and several feet long.  Mom called Dad right away, but then she followed it as it inched across the patio, into the grass, and up the side of the propane tank.  It coiled itself inside the top.  By the time Dad got home, Mom could tell him exactly where the snake was hiding.  Living in the country for a few years had made Mom bolder. 

Then there was the afternoon years later, when a thin, striped garter snake rolled off the roof just as my sister and I set foot on the front step.  It narrowly missed landing on my head.  We screamed, dropped our school books, and retreated to the yard, then watched as the snake slithered up between the bricks and disappeared over the top of the roof.   An unsettling moment, but living in the country had taught us to expect the unexpected. 

As the decades passed, the fields across the road and on either side of Mom and Dad’s property filled in—a housing development to the north, new and closer neighbors to the east and west.  Only the woods behind the barn remained wild and dark and uninhabited.  And as the countryside became more populated, the reptiles became more dangerous.   Dad found a copperhead mama and her babies nesting in the garbage incinerator just beyond the back gate, and even more recently, he discovered two young copperheads in the house.  One slipped into a furnace register before he could capture it.  

But never in fifty-nine years did any of us see another lizard on the place.

Until last month.

Saying Goodbye

The lizard appeared on the weekend my parents decided to leave their dream house, and move into assisted living.  They’d found a new place that offered a spacious apartment, their own private courtyard, and the care they both now need after the isolation of living through the pandemic. 

Back at home after their first visit to the assisted living facility, Dad looked out on the patio, and there it was:  a striped lizard sunning itself on the step.  When we talked later, he asked if I thought the descendant of that first lizard had returned to say goodbye. 

I liked the idea, but since the lizard who visited in 2021 didn’t have a blue tail, I thought it unlikely—until I did a little research.  As it turns out, that blue-tailed lizard in our closet back in 1962 was a hatchling, a broad headed skink.   It was a baby.   Adult skinks don’t have blue tails.  Instead, adult female skinks are striped, just like the one Dad saw last month.  They have light and dark stripes that run down their sides. 

So yes, Dad.  The striped lizard sunning herself on the patio last month could have been a descendant of that hatchling that somehow found its way into our guest bedroom closet fifty-nine years ago.  She could have come to say goodbye.

I hope so.