What I saw...

•When I was about 5 years old, I was standing by an old board fence that separated us from the neighbors. There was this white fuzzy thing on the fence. As I was looking at it, baby spiders suddenly came pouring out. I was mesmerized, and I have been fascinated by spiders ever since.

•May 1981. We had just arrived here from the west (Oregon by way of Los Angeles). It was getting dusky. My parents set up their pop-up camper for themselves and our son, and R maneuvered the U-Haul truck so we could begin unloading our household into the new house. We bustled around for a while, and just as R and I were getting ready to leave for town to find a motel to sleep in, there they were. Fireflies began flickering with their pale, greenish light. They were everywhere, hundreds and hundreds of them, rising and falling. I think we were already on overload from stress and excitement and just the sheer unexpected beauty of this place, and now we were well and truly stunned. We had no idea fireflies came with Missouri.

•When we were still attempting to raise some fresh vegetables, I had gone out to water the hill of squash I had planted a few days before. I had a spray attachment on the hose and I put it to the fine mist setting and began, to be frank, playing in the water. I had it shooting up high, hoping that as it fell, the fine mist would make a rainbow. Suddenly, a hummingbird flew into the mist, landed on the bare ground where the squash were to sprout, and began taking a bath in the spray. Again, I was transfixed by this sight. I think I almost forgot to breathe.

•I was moving toward the screen door at the back of the house, and just as I got there, a lizard darted across the deck and snapped up a cockroach. A few days later, I watched a lizard (perhaps even the same one) drinking water from a plant saucer sitting on the deck.

Nothing earth shattering or very profound, just things of wonder I have witnessed that I don't have to worry about seeing again and again in my mind's eye.