A Fish and A Bird

“A fish and a bird may love each other, but where would they live?”  I can’t remember whose line this is (or even if the line is straight on), but  it figures in a conversation with a fictional Leonardo Da Vinci.  Whose role (this is great) is both sage and fairy godmother in the Cinderella-with-a-twist movie “Ever After”.  Leonardo would be a good one to have this conversation with.  I’m not sure why.  But I like the sound of it.

So, it’s a great question.  We choose a mate (feathered friend or flashy fella), and then what.  Do we build a nest, or find a cubicle in the coral reef?  I cannot say.  Ask Leo.  I don’t have answers; I can only speak to the conundrum.

Frank is nearly a third (if not half) Scandinavian.  His ancestors hail from the far North, where, because of the long, dark, cold winters, people used to paint their home interiors in light colors to catch as much of the rare sunlight as they could.   Thick, insulated boots and woolen socks prevented frostbite.  Frank loves air conditioning.  A lot.  He languishes in the heat, and he prefers rooms cool and quiet with the shades down.  He hates sandals; he has a special relationship with socks.  Don’t mess with his socks.

As we approach my ancestors to make a comparison (obviously I’m going to want to point out opposites), the model breaks down a little.  My ancestors hail from so many places I don’t think it’s possible to mention all of them, but there are rumors of French-ness, and a family Choctaw/Cherokee legend.  Whether it’s relevant to heritage or not, in the end, I love sunlight on my shoulders and sunlight pouring through my windows.  Warmth is imperative.  Sandals are my favorite (high heeled counts), and I love walking through the garden with no shoes at all.  I freeze when Frank is comfortable; he sweats miserably when I am.

I love poetry.  Edna St. Vincent Millay, John Donne, Emily Dickinson… the more cryptic, the more subtle and symbolic and surprising, the more I like it.   Poetry frustrates Frank.   Don’t beat around the bush, please.  Get to the point.  Say what you mean.  Be consistent.  Be considerate (vague-ness and ambiguity= flakiness, which to Frank is bad manners).

Frank loves technology.  He is a digital magician.  He can unravel almost any puzzle, if there is electricity, microchips, or even moving parts involved.  He knows the layers of a network, their functions, laws, protocols (I’m grabbing words here), and it is all beautiful to him.  He imagines lines of numbers streaming from one invisible place to another and is comforted by their sequence and schedule and order.  He knows almost intuitively when even a small detail is off.

And I am what Frank refers to as a twelve o’clock flasher.  Someone who buys a new gadget or goes through a power outage and can’t figure out how to set (or reset) the clocks (or simply doesn’t try, until a week of missed appointments convinces me to address the digital clock mystery).  I cannot be trusted with a cell phone (you should hear the message I dreamed up for mine—definitely flaky).

I could go on filling out the fish/bird model, but this last one is a fun place to end.  I’ll pose the question once more:  Where would a fish and a bird live together?  Still no answer; the jury is sequestered and the lab is waiting for results.  But I can say what’s been attempted.

I rarely burden Frank with Real Actual Poetry, but we both like movies.  Frank has digitized our movie collection on our home network.  We memorize lines and recite them for each other at relevant (or hysterically irrelevant) junctures.  We are also avid music collectors (our music is also on our home network).  “Who sings this one?” we’ll race each other to guess first.  In a way, that is poetic.

Frank bought sandals today.  He’s wearing socks with them.  He also stayed up late in his hotel in Montgomery, Alabama, to design a business card for me, with my web address on it.  He made frames for my paintings and an enclosure for my stall for the upcoming art show.  He may not like poetry in general, but he supports and sponsors mine.

And he gave me his old i-phone, when he upgraded.  Me, the twelve o’clock flasher.  He was so excited, both for his own new toy, and (I finally figured out) to invite me to play in his world.   Oblivious to the element of invitation, I on the other hand felt a little bit like most women do when their husband buys them a ratchet set for Christmas.  How nice, but I don’t think you get me.  I took the i-phone on a run, with a headset attached so I could listen to my favorite tunes while I ran (Frank had set everything up for me, down to syncing my i-phone with my laptop music library).  I couldn’t find the little armband thing that holds the i-phone, so I just tucked my hand-me-down-but-still-quite-valuable phone in my bra.

I get really hot and sweaty when I run.  I don’t mind (heat doesn’t bother me), except sometimes I’m a little embarrassed at the possibility of a passerby noticing that I am so very, very drenched.  I hadn’t had the i-phone many days before it stopped working.  Even Frank couldn’t fix it.  He was completely mystified.  We took it to the Apple store (one of Frank’s favorite places in the world) and had one of the Apple minion guys look at it (seriously!  They so remind me of the cute little minions on “Despicable Me”!).  The minion guy returned from the Apple Minion Guy Secret Lair (that back room with the huge metal doors) and said well, it looks like there’s corrosion here.  Moisture damage.  We can fix it, but it will cost about as much as  buying a new phone.  Frank was puzzled.  What do you mean, corrosion?  What do you mean, moisture?  The minion guy stared at him.  He figured he had been pretty direct, had gotten right to the point.  Hadn’t beat around the bush at all.  I said, you know, Frank.  Moisture damage.  Corrosion.  I shook my head at the minion guy, and he handed us our dead phone and went to help someone else.  I whispered to Frank about the run and the music and the sweating and the bra.  It still took a while for it to click.

When it did, his upper lip stiffened.   We shared a bleak lunch, and afterwards a long conversation (thankfully for my husband, in an air-conditioned though fading van) as we drove home, in which we recounted the hazards and mischances of our bird/fish union, and in which I realized that the phone  was as much a plea to come play as it was a gift.  We made resolutions, including (for practical purposes) a couple in which Frank had a heroic role.  For twenty dollars, he found a crucial i-phone part and a simple kit online, and within a few days he had fixed my corroded moisture damaged i-phone.  And loaded even more cool applications and stuff on it.  I will not be tucking electronic devices in  my bra when I go running anymore.  And I’m learning to like texting, and i found a few tunes that I love on my Pandora app, and I’ve learned to say “app” instead of the whole word.  I take pictures.  I keep my battery charged.   And Frank laughs when he reaches my voice mail message.