Essays by Lesa Quale Ferguson

Expecting Trouble: A Sitcom, A Word, A Whole Lot of Feelings

The Conductor’s Daughter

The Tortoise, the Hare, and the Fox: An Adoption Fable

The Opera of the Cake: A Tale of Three Mothers

Pinball Wizard: a Lesson in Boys, Badassery, and Brokenhearted Victories

Mediums, Memories, and Messy Histories

Lessons Learned: Parenting Beyond Expectations for an ADHD Child

HOMELesa Quale Ferguson2025-02-11T18:15:55+00:00

Rick Fitch Platform

Welcome to Talking Iguana

Welcome to the creative platform of Lesa Quale Ferguson (affectionately known as Talking Iguana)—a space where words, photos, and stories meet. Here, I document my work as an artist, parent, and advocate, embracing the messy, vibrant life that shapes my art. From family stories to creative projects, this site showcases my work.

Read My Stories

View My Portfolio

Explore My Written Work

Published essays
Through personal memories, local experiences, and subtle observations, theses essays uncover depth in everyday life.

Advocate Like a Mother
Essays on my advocacy for my kids, focusing on navigating systems and fighting for the support they deserve. Try not to take it on the chin.

First Novel. Still writing it … 20 years later

I am currently taking a series of online novel writing classes through The Writer’s Workshop.

Jana Harris teaches the class. She assigned the text The Weekend Novelist by Robert J. Ray. These are posts based on the assignments.

Coming Attractions!

The Dead Pecker Bench

SHHH! Novel in Progress

Read the First Chapter

Explore Completed Assignments

Douglas City Post office tin type

Photography as Storytelling

Since the early 2000s, I’ve been pairing words with images. It started with coding and Photoshop and grew into capturing life’s fleeting moments. My photos, especially those documenting our family since my son’s birth in 2005 and the adoption of his brother in 2012, hold stories of love, resilience, and the ordinary magic of everyday life.

The Art of the Thank You Note: A Postcard PortfolioLesa Quale Ferguson2024-10-21T17:49:01+00:00

Back of Talking Iguana Postcard

The Art of the Thank You Note: A Postcard Portfolio

Winners from the Erie Co. FairLesa Quale Ferguson2024-10-21T17:09:52+00:00

2nd Grader at Field Day P.S. 18 in Buffalo

Winners from the Erie Co. Fair

Calendar PagesLesa Quale Ferguson2024-09-22T21:26:52+00:00

Enz Quale, Sam and Cal Ferguson Calendar

Calendar Pages

Prom PicturesLesa Quale Ferguson2024-10-05T02:53:31+00:00

Erie Co Botanical Gardens prom

Prom Pictures

Calendar Slides from the AughtsLesa Quale Ferguson2024-02-03T01:07:19+00:00

In the Redding Bus Station 1970s

Calendar Slides from the Aughts

Kodak CarouselLesa Quale Ferguson2024-02-05T22:11:44+00:00

Ugly Couch with the Quale Kids and Cusellas

Kodak Carousel

Inspired by Bertien van ManenLesa Quale Ferguson2024-02-02T00:51:38+00:00

Dominic Hawk Cusella bowling

Inspired by Bertien van Manen

Essays and Stories by

Lesa Quale Ferguson

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
― Sylvia Plath

April 2025

Expecting Trouble: A Sitcom, A Word, A Whole Lot of Feelings

Expecting Trouble: A Sitcom, A Word, A Whole Lot of Feelings

Earlier draft posted on FB [...]

February 2025

The Conductor’s Daughter

The Conductor’s Daughter

My Lunch with Max J [...]

The Tortoise, the Hare, and the Fox: An Adoption Fable

The Tortoise, the Hare, and the Fox: An Adoption Fable

This is a fable about [...]

January 2025

The Opera of the Cake: A Tale of Three Mothers

The Opera of the Cake: A Tale of Three Mothers

Originally posted on FB, December [...]

Browse All My Stories

Visit on Instagram

Sam leaves tomorrow morning at 5 a.m. for his Summer Sea Term, shipping out within the week to New Orleans, Montauk, Portugal, the Azores, and finally, Norway.

Some of you tried to tell me that when your kids leave home, a part of you travels with them—that they carry your hopes, your habits, your heart into the world. I didn’t understand that before. My separations from people have always felt like tearing, like grief; I didn’t know there was another kind of leaving, the kind that opens something up.

And I don’t just mean travel. Our children, if we let them, broaden connection to what’s real and worldly and possible—just as we once did for our parents.

I get the part about relief when they’re doing well, but “pride” doesn’t quite cover it. It’s more like awe. I think I’d feel the same if he came home and said he was studying microbes or Buddhism or told me he was queer. What matters isn’t the direction—it’s the expansion. I feel included in the adventure. We’re in this novel together.

Right now, though, he’s upstairs with Cal, having some special time. Cal asked if Bones would watch him play video games. When I left them, Sam was stretched out on Cal’s bunk bed—the same bed he once slept in—watching patiently, asking what he should bring back. Cal said, “I don’t know.” And we don’t—not yet. But we will, once Sam returns, bringing back something of each place he’s seen.

This weekend, Sam and Dave, with Jordan, helped raise a gazebo in our backyard—the one I asked for as a Mother’s Day and birthday gift. He’ll miss those days, but each time I sit down to write, sheltered from sun and rain, he’ll be with me here, part of the structure, part of our ongoing story.

Since he was born, Sam has been my good fortune builder. We are building still.

First Sting of the Season! A bee wormed into Bone's suit and then Sam refused to take any more pictures after that because those bees were a swarmin'.

Bee But.
The hive’s thriving: royal jelly, larvae, eggs, queen—everything buzzing along.

Our bee guy’s name is Newman, so naturally Cal named the hive box The Elaine Benes.

I mean… this kid knows how to make his mama bee happy.

Cal woke up feeling a certain way about Mother's Day. Complicated. He's still struggling. He's still working through things. I trust there’s a path ahead for him—and for us—with his birth mother. I woke up feeling a certain way about all the pregnancies I had that didn't come to term.

I find the idea of "when life begins" as inadequate as if that mother-spark-of-life isn't always present inside a woman's body. Sometimes by choice or biology or the great mystery that spark doesn't manifest into a baby delivered into this world, but as women we are profoundly aware of the dimming and smoldering and shine and warmth and brightness as we did inside of our own mother's bodies and all the way back.

Yes there is life/death and light/dark, but we cannot imagine them separately only as a snake eating its own tail. Life exists and death exists and we only have the sense of one because of the other.

Don't let politics cheat you out of experiencing the shine within you. Life didn't begin within or end within but flows through us—timeless, onward, eternal.

We are not helpless in miscarriages nor are we all powerful even in our choices.

I choose to believe that whatever spark and sperm triggered my eggs to divide, creating more of me and not me fanned the light for Sam to be born and then dimmed for me to reach out to Cal.

Some of the cells generated from that mother spark were delivered back into the universe, but some were molten and forged me into the mother that I am.

Complicated.

Today was the end of an era. Cal played his last game with Buffalo United winning a huge victory. At the half, they had shut out the other team and so the boys worked together to get the one kid who hadn't scored the whole season a goal.

When Cal started there, the team was a little like the Bad News Bears awaiting the arrival of Walter Matthew, salty, saucy, full of piss & vinegar, sass and scrappy, my little wallflower might have held the title of head sauce maker. One of the kids on the other team said, "You need to be 🎤 up so everyone can hear you."

Our niece's roomie brought a couple of students from her class on the West side, one of them Abdi pictured here brought his own salt shaker to the team, a star with a slew of brothers and his shoes always untied.

I so appreciated director Neil Smith especially when there weren't enough kids in that age group to make a team and he let our kids play over the winter on one of the other teams.

This year Cal started with the Stallions as a developmental player and ODP so he learned to build up his skills and zip it more.

He aged up in flag football. As you can see in these pics he's in the land of giants. I thought for sure he'd quit especially after the coach started calling him "Little Man" and set him as center, but Little Man took it all in stride and he is all in for playing the season while I cringe at the gigantic bodies filling the frame of my lens.

Little Man is growing up.

#badnewsbears

This is a picture of Cal at the first movie he ever saw in a theater. Thankfully, we were the only ones there because… he’s very Paddington-esque (minus the British accent).

We’ve been trying to see Paddington in Peru for months to no avail. Finally watched it at home. And as Mary Brown began coming to terms with Paddington staying in Peru, I started to choke up—hiccupy-crying, mouthing, “I’m not ready. I am not ready for this. Mary Brown is handing this so much better than I ever could. Turn it off.”

Usually when I cry in a movie, I feel manipulated—like I’m watching one of those AT&T commercials. But there are four movies that bypass all that and just wreck me:

*Terms of Endearment and The Mirror Has Two Faces (yes, I have some mommy issues)

*The Wild Robot and Toy Story 3 (yes, I have attachment issues).

But Paddington? I wasn’t in full ugly cry until he had to make his decision—should he stay or should he go? And then he chose the one I didn’t expect. I burst into tears, tackled Cal, and sobbed: “Whatever you decide, I will be both a mess and also completely able to handle it better than I am right now.”

Cal, deadpan: “Mom, you’re glazing. I don't even know where Peru is.” but he let me hug him and tousle his hair in a way he hasn't in ages.

#paddingtoninperu
#paddington

Taste of Falk! Cal's recipes didn't get made but the ones that did were yummy. What a great idea for a family/school get together. Good thing Uncle Scott wasn't there, he would have tried to take over the whole operation. He's still salty that Cal hasn't cooked him the Sesame Peanut Butter Noodles that was featured in the Falk Cookbook along with the tollhouse "pan banged" cookies both of which Cal makes on the regular. Cal is on his way to the culinary prowess of our fam.

Wonder was barking non-stop at the guy in the next yard. I went outside yelling her name over her incessant barking to bring her in. She didn’t listen. She ran off. I yelled some more. I looked like a hot mess, hopelessly outmatched by a 50-pound dog with a nose for some weird smell that I began to notice too.

That’s when I saw the guy was spraying chemicals—on a windy day. The drift was blowing onto my flowers, my lawn, and onto Wonder. I could see just how much drift there was—pear blossom petals were floating right along with it.

Still she barked. Still I yelled.

That’s when he said, “Could you get the dog to stop barking?”

And I said, “Could you stop spraying toxic chemicals on a windy day?”

He squinted at me. “What did you say to me?”

Dog still barking.

I said, “Those chemicals are toxic to pets, to kids, to gardens like mine. I can smell them. They’re blowing into my yard—right along with the pear blossom petals.”

I mean, I get that my dog is obnoxious—but at least she doesn’t have a half-life.

Cal finally came out and helped wrangle her inside. Now he’s worried his soccer balls are coated and his mint plant is poisoned.

The photos? That’s a house on our street. Still full of vulgarity and hate, even though his guy won. I keep telling Cal the signage says more about the meanness in him than it does about Biden. I'm pretty sure this is the guy who drives by and calls us communists. It’s hard to live in a neighborhood and country where the values are this misaligned

Honestly, I wouldn’t have said anything to this purveyor of toxicity if he hadn’t snapped at me about the dog—while I was clearly trying. Now I’ve got a lungful of chemicals, a sore throat from yelling, and an axe to grind.

Thank God the woman bathing her backyard and mine in pesticides is putting up a fence.

Not going to lie, this has been a rough couple weeks and a hard day of parenting. But then ... There were bees, 🐝 And everyone be-hived

Oh Annie, Bee-have!
today the suit, tomorrow the Bees!
Bee-day, Monday.

My Easter Honeys! Sam isn't home and I think I unconsciously shut down Easter this year. No decor whatsoever. I can't get motivated to make the quiche. Everytime I look at the ingredients, I think of my Bones calling it a "Ham Holiday." Cal requested no candy this year, "It's not good for me." Blubbering for Easter past.I may never survive my children's independence. At least I have the photographs to imbibe in yesteryear. #freshmaneaster

BeeCute! BeeKeep

READ MY BLOG POST — LINK IN BIO
📺 “Forget ‘expecting.’ Try ‘communist.’ Or ‘divorce.’ Or ‘trans.’ Or ‘DEI.’ Or ‘immigrant.’ That’ll get them going.”

📝 link in bio
#ADHDParenting #ILoveLucy #lucyisenceinte #TalkingIguana #DEI #immigrant #taxes #divorce

Follow Me On Instagram

Large snail and flowers

“I yam what I yam” — like Popeye, I stick to what I yam. Outspoken, messy, and creative, I find meaning in the everyday life, turning ordinary moments into stories. This is what I do, “That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!”

wanna talk to the iguana?

email

lesa@talkingiguana.com

jump To

get subscribed

© Copyright 2018 – 2022 | Talking Iguana | All Rights Reserved | Powered by Lesa Quale Ferguson