Happy Friday!
I thought I’d take a break from writing about writing and tell you about my life-long love of elephants. I ab-so-lutely adore them! I thought my obsession began when I lived in Pakistan as a child. I don’t actually recall seeing any elephants during the 3.5 years I lived there-there might have been some in the animal preserves or zoos, but I really don’t remember seeing any in the wild. Which makes it rather odd that we have quite a few carved wooden elephants that we picked up in various bazaars. I do remember the elephants in Thailand. They seemed to be everywhere. Something about their dark, moist eyes calls to me, they are so freaking intelligent…and so vulnerable.
Anyway, I’m thinking about contributing to elephant conservation and ordering genuine trunk-painted elephant art. If you’re interested as well, here’s a link: http://www.elephantartgallery.com/paintings
Researching where to buy a painting from made me ponder the genesis of my love…and then a memory came to me. Picture a tiny curly-haired Rosemary pulling a large pink elephant. The elephant had little marbles on the bottom of its feet and rolled perfectly along on our wooden floors. This memory predates my life in Pakistan by at least four years. So, maybe we went to the zoo? Prospect Park Zoo was still in existence back then or maybe I saw a nature show…I really don’t know.
Which takes me to the photograph included with this post. We were at the Asheboro Zoo in NC several years ago, I turned around and the elephants were SO CLOSE, you could almost touch them. I whipped my digital camera out and started taking pictures. I was so excited. Did I mention I sort of climbed around bushes to get closer to the elephants. No? Well that’s important. I finished taking the pictures and of course I wanted to share them with my husband and daughter, who had wandered away–they don’t share my undying love of elephants, go fig. I looked up, called out to them and promptly fell flat on my face. I broke my camera, bashed my lip (I had several loose teeth for a while), scraped up my face and ended up with an impressive black eye.
My husband and daughter came running over to see what had happened, by now a crowd had gathered around me. He pushed through the crowd and helped me to my wobbly feet, the only thing I could say to him as I started to cry is that I broke my camera. Tom immediately dried my tears by telling me the memory card would be all right, whew! The pictures came out great and I have a framed version in my bedroom–in an elephant frame no less. The blood, sweat and tears were worth it. However, when we went to National Zoo and stopped by to see the elephants, my husband kept a firm grip on me.
One Story at a Time 