I couldn’t find my Bluetooth speaker anywhere. It must still be packed in a box from the recent move of the contents of our home from our neighbourhood in town to our move to the country on the outskirts of the same town.
I was searching for it everywhere. I was inspired.
I was on a mission.
Whilst sorting through a drawer in the living room cabinet, I was talking to myself aloud about the status of the missing speaker. I was in a conversation with myself, as if I knew the location of the speaker and was purposely withholding it from my own self.
My husband, the Carpenter, walked into the room to find me mumbling to myself riffling through the drawer that held those neatly folded linen napkins we never use.
He inquired as to the focus of my search and immediately, like many questions of this nature, he knew he would regret asking it.
“Do you think bunnies would like Barry White, or would they be more the Marvin Gaye type?” I asked, sincerely, without looking up to gauge his reaction. It was, in my mind, a sincere question.
I opened the next drawer, with neatly folded placemats that we also never use, and began to dig around.
The Carpenter stood there watching me, arms folded across his abdomen, jawline firm, eyes squinted just enough to detect his regret and frustration for engaging in this conversation. He flatly uttered, “Why?”
I closed the drawer, exasperated that my search was futile. I looked over to him, expecting we’d share this frustration, but his look suggested something else was bothering him. Oh right, the question.
“I noticed we have a lot of bunny tracks on the deck and through the yard,” I said, pointing to the evidence of bunny paw prints on the freshly fallen snow, clearly visible from the window.
“The other morning, Frederick the fox was out there chirping his mating call, which by the way sounded like a car alarm on a car that nobody would want to steal, and it got me thinking, spring is in the air, so maybe a little mood music would be apropos. I just can’t find my Bluetooth speaker.”
Sometimes my outside voice and inside voice get into a conversation and I forget that other people can hear the outside voice’s interpretation of the inside voice’s commentary. I just say stuff that maybe wasn’t meant to be heard, but in all fairness, he asked.
After 30 years together, he should know better.
The Carpenter stood there looking at me with an expression that was part confusion, as if he is still dumbfounded at the thought processes of my creative mind, and part disbelief at the things I say that he hears (with an appreciation for the fact that he rarely hears anything I say at all).
He said nothing.
“Jazz,” I exclaimed. “Bunnies would love the wah-wah of a muted trumpet and some baritone saxophone, with a steady drum.”
And then I saw the Carpenter’s smile. He couldn’t help but be amused. I promised to keep life interesting, and I have kept my word.
Laughter is a love language.
Barry White it is.
