The Lizard

At age 4, I liked putting worms onto fish hooks and catching frogs in mayonnaise jars. Such interests made it hard for my mom to corral me, especially when it was time to cook dinner. Late one afternoon my wet jar of baby frogs broke on the patio and severed a tendon in my tiny thumb. About midnight a pediatric orthopedic surgeon who was in town for a conference, performed emergency surgery and saved my hand. After that ordeal, I stuck to keeping miniature turtles in a clear plastic beach resort complete with swimming pool and fake palm tree.

In a tropical climate like Houston, garden snakes, horned toads and bright green lizards frequented our back yard, so leaving the sliding glass door open was a capital offense in our family. That's why I was surprised, four years ago, to hear my mom giggling and squealing when she answered my call.

"Are you busy?" I asked, wondering what on earth was going on.

"We've been trying to catch a lizard that got in through the patio door then turned up on our bedroom wall," she laughed. "Daddy has it trapped in a mayonnaise jar but we don't know how to get the lid on without him getting loose again. You're the frog catcher--what do you think we should do?"

Impressed that she still remembered my most traumatic preschool moment (and probably her scariest parental moment) I started to answer . . . but she interrupted. "I'll have to call you back. Daddy needs me to help him with the lid."

She didn't call back, but I forgot about it until a week later when I was in town.We were sitting on the patio when a little green lizard ran toward the sliding door. I started laughing and asked Mom if she thought it could be the same lizard they trapped the day I called.

"What lizard?" she said blankly.

"The one that was sleeping above your bed that Daddy trapped in the mayo jar just before I called last week."

"I don't know what you're talking about, but we've never had a lizard in our house--you know how Daddy is about keeping the sliding door closed!" When I persisted she got flat mad.

That was my first clue that something was going wrong in my mother's brain. How could she remember me as "the frog catcher" from fifty years ago, but not recall a very unusual incident a week before?

Today a novice can tell that my 84 year old mom has Alzheimer's Disease. Whenever I see a lizard now, I remember the exasperated expression on her face, but then I try to conjure up the joyful laughter I heard when she answered my phone call giggling like a four year old with a mayonnaise jar.