Lizards

My favorite part of the new house is the back porch, which is shady and big and mostly private (except on one side, which looks directly onto the neighbors’ porch and pool such that we have to wave at each other or it’s awkward) and looks out over a big back yard with lots of scrubby Texan struggle trees, and some rock features. Edith and I hang out on the porch for a large part of each day. I got her a baby mat she can loll around on and some citronella candles that don’t work.

Now, one thing about me is, I love a lizard. And there’s a great one that lives near a sideways plant pot in a rock feature just in front of the porch. This lizard is exactly the color of the ashes from an extinguished campfire — silvery white belly and darker grey markings along the back. The first day, I watched it sun itself atop the plant pot and various surrounding rocks, as well as do pushups and execute some frantic laps into the surrounding grass and back.

Today, I didn’t see it, although I looked for it all day. (It’s a sloppy digression from this story, but in case it comes up later, I feel the need to point out that there’s also another lizard that lives on the back fence, but at this point, it’s so far away that it’s simply a mysterious black lizard shape that migrates up and down the boards throughout the day; I don’t feel attached to it yet.) Eventually, I saw its little head poking up tentatively on the far side of the rock feature. I guess maybe Edith and I had made it feel less at home.

Then, all of a sudden, I thought I saw it scurry underneath a rock and onto a fertilized bit of soil, but when it came into the sunlight, I realized that this was a miniature version of the initial lizard! A tiny mini-me of it! A baby!

The lizard has a baby!

I also have a baby! We’re two moms with our babies just hanging out in the yard!

What a thing.