A shitty photo on a day when I still feel shitty because I just can’t find the energy to take a better photo, but it is a photo with a story that makes me smile, and maybe you too.
Most people with a span of brick wall above the fireplace that measures something like five feet by way more than six feet would put a large piece of artwork on it.
Clearly I am not most people.
Why did I hang a silly little 5 inch metal gekko on a huge blank wall?
Because of Mom.
Not because she wanted me to, she never got to see this home, but she would have appreciated that I did hang it there.
Mom had a flair for interesting things in interesting places. My brother was recently at our home and was standing in the living room, casting his eyes around. After a few minutes he said “You’ve got Mom’s eye for decorating. She always had things in interesting places.”
So I guess I learned from Mom, and it is true, though I generally think I put odd things in odder locations. Like the slug on an overhang above a window seven feet up.
But there is another reason I love this little gekko.
It reminds me of a trip to Hawaii and Mom screaming in my ear.
Why is that a good memory?
I’ll tell you.
When my brother and sister-in-law announced their engagement, they planned their wedding on Kauai, basically just immediate’ish family. In the days prior to the wedding, Mom and Kirk and I were walking on the grounds of the hotel and there was a large bush with bunches of interesting berries on it. Mom, ever curious and optimistic about my knowledge of plant life, asked me what it was. I probably muttered something about her son being the plant guy and her daughter being the fish person, but I do clearly remember standing next to the bush, with Mom at my side, and putting my hand underneath a bunch of the berries and lifting up to take a closer look.
That was when Mom let out a blood-curdling scream that felt like would burst my eardrum!
Both of us bolted backwards, her looking horrified, me looking at her in complete confusion and yelling “WHAT!!!!!” “WHATT!!!!”
….because, let’s be serious here….to me that ONLY thing that warranted a scream like that was a massive spider!
Her response….while holding her arm straight out and pointing at the bush in horror?
“GEKKO!”
To which I replied….
“That shriek was for a gekko!?!?”
She looked suitably chagrined when I walked back to the bush and lifted the berries up again, to look for said gekko, because I love geckos.
Actually, there is another gekko story involving Mom and I, but I was a kid.
We went to Kauai and we were visiting Waimea Canyon. Mom and I went to use the public washroom and Mom went into one of the stalls….and immediately started screaming…yelling for me to open the door.
I’ve always been the logical one and clearly she was the one inside the stall and should be the one to open the door. When I pointed this out to her she was highly unappreciative and shrieked at me that she couldn’t, because there was a gekko on the inside of the door.
They say that our parents tend to be the ones to install their fears on us. Clearly not the case here.
And thus, this gekko on a large blank wall always makes me smile when I look at it.
