The Frog Saw Flies, My Wife The Ballet

How Amazingly Different We All Are.

Last night as we were getting ready for bed,  I told my wife that I had missed her company that day.  She had left late in the morning to go to the city to see the ballet with her sister, Margie.  She asked me, “what did you miss?”   I said, “your company.”

When I awoke this morning,  in my head I heard Simon and Garfunkel singing, “The Dangling Conversation.”  I wondered if after a quarter of a century of marriage we were not as magically connected as we had been when we first met?  Was there too little unknown about each of us, that was once new, and could then spark the interesting conversation that had captivated two young people falling in love?  How could I tell her what I missed if she perhaps thought that our lack of frequent impassioned conversation  meant a loss of connection?

Then it occurred to me, we are truly men from Mars and women from Venus.  Not to mention as different as frogs and dogs.  Though we both have the rough shape of human beings,  what goes on in our heads is often quite different,  not just because we are men and women but because God made each of us very different and very special.  After all, as it is commonly shared, “If God made us the same; one of us would be unnecessary.”

My wife can look back in time and tell me about conversations she had 30 years ago. She recalls the friend she has not seen since childhood as if she was here today.  Not so for me.   I thought about what it was that I missed today.  Not that we don’t talk and plan and do fun things together; it is just different than it was on our first few months of dating.

As I lay in bed with my eyes closed in the very dark bedroom,  I wondered what did I miss of my wife that day?  Then from God’s eye view,  I saw a beautiful solar system. It was a complex ballet of planets with incredible and unique mysteries hidden by clouds, oceans or even seas of lava.   From a distance these were dark mysterious planets moving around a distant central point in the infinite cold blackness of space.  Then the sun lit up and the solar system was blanket in warmth.  The clouds dissipated and on the third planet the beauty of life was revealed.   I knew what I had missed. Perhaps I could try to tell her.  She was the sun in the center of my universe.  We did not always have to have the most amazing  conversation; we just had to be there for each other to make our universe complete.

God made us each so different.  I wished at times I could recall life as my wife does but then again; I have learned to like my way of looking at the world symbolically. I like her being my sun,  even if I cannot recall in detail what she did the day that she lit up my heart.   I do however recall reading “Men Are From Mars And Women Are From Venus.”   The greatness of this book, to me, is that it recognizes how different we all are, men and women.

I have a friend, who is gay.  I had worked with him for several years when I was younger.  I often envied him for his incredible memory for details.  He recalled everyone’s names,  their children’s names and their dog’s names.  He recalled the conversations he had shared with them and he related to the women in a way I  could not.  He was a musician and an artist with fashion and style.  I enjoyed watching him rehearse with his band and wished I could be as gifted with music but maybe not; after all, many things are more desirable when you are not surrounded by them daily. But he helped me see how special and different we all are and how that ads to the beauty of the universe.

Then there is the frog.  The frog sees the world with Frog Eyes.  We have learned that when a frog sees a moving fly go by he has an amazing skill of targeting the fly. In split seconds the frog with his radar like eyes, reaches out with his long fast tongue and snags the fly in mid-flight to become his dinner.   However,  we also know that if the frog was starving to death and we surrounded him with freshly killed flies; he would continue to starve to death as he cannot see flies that are not moving!  The frog has a filter in his visual system that does not allow him to sense small black objects that are not moving.  He is blind to them!

In a similar manner each of us,  I suspect,  sees the word in our own unique way.  My wife enjoys the ballet but I would be bored.  Did I miss her company?  As much as you would miss the sun if it did not rise one morning.  Can I tell her in words she will understand?  Might she think she is just a window dressing to make the home look prettier?  I suspect not as she knows in many, many ways how special she is to me but she likes to be reminded with words now and then.

Like the frog, that is a clearly different creature whose unique skills,  scientific research has made apparent;  each of us is special and created by God for a purpose. Sometimes we don’t realize how special we each are or how much we are appreciated for our uniqueness.  Sometimes we look with envy on another and wish we were more like them.  When we do, it is wise to recall that each of us is special and the world would be a darker place without us.

Janr Ssor (Dr Joseph Ross)