My Million-Dollar Donkey

by East, Ginny;

  We worked side by side for years, the synergy created by the combination of my experience and pragmatic approach and his natural creativity the success factor that made our little company eventually worth a million dollars. But deep down, Mark never felt amply recognized. The elements that he found so very attractive about me in the beginning, such as my talent and drive and the way people looked up to me, became the qualities he hated most about me later, as is often the case in the complex story of love.

  Mark now had 17 years of hard feelings built up, and his animosity leaked out in a myriad of ways, beginning with his inability to sincerely celebrate any achievement I made, and eventually by punishing me with constant long periods of physical alienation. Sex was the only thing he had total control of in our relationship, and he wielded his power by ignoring me with a vengeance. Our relationship had long since turned into something more like siblings or best friends than lovers.

  Fourteen years into the marriage, driven by the oppressive circumstances of our ongoing lack of physical connection, I had a fall from grace. I forged a connection to an old friend on the Internet, and so moved was I to be on the receiving end of a man’s interest and appreciation that I stupidly had a one night stand on a trip out of town. Remorseful, I confessed to Mark. This flung open the door to the traditional drama that befalls a marriage when trust is broken. The episode lead to our living apart for a month, and we seriously contemplated divorce. But like many couples in crisis, we worked through the horrible breach of faith with accusations, tears, and apologies, and in the end, we determined that we loved each other and would stay together.

  I was ashamed and regretful of my mistake, and would have done anything to undo my folly. Mark took responsibility for his part in the sad ordeal, promising he would never leave me untouched for months (or years) again. Our love was authentic—certainly authentic enough to recognize what our mistakes were and how they came to be—and we both stated our love would be stronger once we overcame the problem.

  All of this drama and the close call of divorce was a contributing factor in our decision to sell the business and escape our stalemate existence in Florida. Moving to the country represented a clean slate and the opportunity for a new dynamic and a fresh beginning. Mark insisted he wasn’t that young financial mess living with his mother anymore. He was a man with a deep desire to prove himself, and he desperately wanted to assume the leadership role to show the world, and me, what he could do if only he was totally in charge. If he had the power to make the decisions about our money and our future, then our intimacy issues would smooth out too, or so he assured me.

  All I had to do was let him be the guy.

  Now, you might think I would be uncomfortable giving up my independence so completely, but in truth, I wanted to reverse roles as much as he did. Loving someone who resents you, who can’t resist making little digs about your behavior, or who can’t bring themselves to show pride or interest in any of your achievements because every accomplishment is viewed as a sign of your swelled ego is no fun. Being deeply in love with someone who won’t touch you with tenderness is no fun either.

  Mark had made infinitely clear that since he’d been wronged, he had the right to take additional liberties in the give and take of household equality. I was serving my penance, which meant I had no right to stop him from spending, and if he wanted to leave me bitterly alone while he shopped himself sick, that was his prerogative too.

  I was deathly tired of the energy required to be the driving force of the business and, at the same time, a fulltime wife and mother. I was tired of balancing finances and being the boss and having to ‘force’ my husband to accept projects (and the work involved) to keep revenue coming into the family. I was sick being the one to take out the trash and get new car tires and all the other traditionally male tasks that fell on my plate because I married a guy who considered me capable. Deep down, I was just as jealous of other marriages as he was. I envied women who were married to men who made decisions, paid the bills, made love enthusiastically, and took care of all the mechanical and masculine details of life with confidence. I wanted to be the girl, and giving Mark the reins to our life seemed to be the key.

  Just as we had flipped the switch from being city dwellers to country residents, dancers to farmers, obsessive workers to retired people, we flipped roles in our marriage, too. Mark took over all the decisions and assumed complete control over our finances. Overnight, he became the ultimate authority regarding what we bought, where we lived, what we could afford, and how our life would unfold. He occasionally asked for my opinion about the color of a new couch he wanted to buy or what kind of tile I thought would look best in the kitchen, but if I voiced a preference that was in any way opposed to what he wanted, he forged ahead and did whatever he wished anyway. That was okay by me. I couldn’t care less what color the couch was, really. I just wanted us to be happy and to interact in a healthy way on that couch.

  Old habits are hard to break, so when some of Mark’s decisions set off warning bells, I couldn’t help but ask questions about our finances, such as when he canceled our youngest child’s college plan to free up more money for his building project. Mark’s opinion was we couldn’t afford her college plan now, but we would have plenty of money to attend to her educational needs later. Unable to satisfy my desire to keep up her little savings plan, I went ahead and paid off the last of my son’s prepaid tuition, facing Mark’s displeasure stoically.

  “Certainly you can build a house without canceling college plans too. We have so much to work with,” I argued, a sick foreboding of doom settling around my heart as more and more I saw evidence that we had very different priorities.

  The reinvention of our life was now in full force. We had changed locations, careers, and life attitudes. Our wardrobe was different, landscape was different, furniture was different, dogs were different, friends were different, recreational choices different, diet different, cars different, reading material different, and our family dynamic too was different.

  The problem was, no matter how different everything was externally, inside we were still basically the same. Mark still felt undermined and controlled when I voiced even the simplest concern about his spending and priorities. He maintained control in the only way he knew, by avoiding physical intimacy and alienating me when he was displeased. We were back in our dysfunctional rut, only this rut admittedly had a prettier landscape.

  Everything I had wanted in life before we retired, I wanted still. Peace. Romance with my husband. Family time. Expansive opportunity for my children. A life that was more about experiences and togetherness than “stuff.” The business, long blamed as the cause of our problems, was gone, so why was I so lonely, and still shattered because my husband found endless excuses to put off physical togetherness? How come, no matter how much money we had, we were constantly in debt and financial stress continued to chase us as if it was tied to our tails by a string?

  I couldn’t put a voice to my disappointment or frustration, because admitting a few million dollars and total freedom wasn’t enough to fix what ailed us meant we had to look deeper. We had seized an amazing opportunity to create whatever kind of life we wanted. We began this journey with a beautiful family, a long history as a couple, and a solid marriage. We had several million dollars in property, pledges, and the bank, and the time and freedom to do anything we wanted from this day forward. To be anything less than grateful for a life filled with such blessings would be a sin, right?

  So, instead of questioning why our life reinvention was not working in the areas that counted most, Mark and I dove into change with more conviction than ever, almost frantically, trusting that once the metamorphosis was complete, happiness would be ours.

  We kept changing, changing, changing... and not changing at all.

  “Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.”

 
—Henry David Thoreau

  COUNTRY ELEGANCE

  Baby chicks and bunnies are the Easter gifts of choice for an animal-crazed kid. My daughter had hands-on experience with both by now, which took away any hope that a little ball of fuzz would assure her ultimate joy on Easter morning. But an incubator... now that would be breaking new ground. Not only would hatching chicks at home be fun, but educational as well. Mark muttered that a chocolate bunny and a stuffed toy would suffice, but gave his consent, so on Easter morning Neva received candy nestled inside an eighteen-inch-square still-air incubator.

  The incubator was nothing more than a small box made of Styrofoam with a light for warmth and a grid bottom. Water was poured into grooves in a lower panel to create humidity. A four inch plastic window on the lid allowed eager owners an opportunity to view the contents without disrupting the temperature, but four times a day the lid would have to be removed to hand turn the eggs inside. Incubating eggs was an interactive activity. Cool!

  The family members all had an opinion about what eggs we should try to hatch. Mark suggested starting with a few of our own (free) random chicken eggs, but we had more than enough chickens now, so I was pushing for something novel like quail or duck eggs. Kent thought we should hatch an ostrich and claimed that if we did, he would ride the bird someday (his idea of a joke, I think). Neva didn’t care what we hatched, as long as she could watch a real live baby bird come into the world.

  The day after Easter, Neva found one little bantam chicken egg in a pile of hay, which she happily put in the incubator. We drew a cute smiley face on the shell with Magic Marker so we could keep track in the turning process. In my opinion, one little chicken egg didn’t justify a 30-day commitment to egg rotation, so I was on the lookout for more eggs.

  The feed store didn’t sell eggs for incubation, and the only other store around was Wal-Mart, which had a lot of farm needs but no fertilized eggs, so I typed “bird eggs” into a search on eBay and sure enough, dozens of sources for fertilized eggs popped up.

  Neva and I were leaning towards ducks, so I bid on several breeds and ended up winning a dozen Appellate duck eggs. To celebrate, I made a quick visit to Amazon for poultry hatching books. Then, I went back to eBay to browse a bit more, mostly just to gawk at the offerings. That’s when I stumbled upon peacock eggs for auction.

  Peacocks! A glamorous, sophisticated bird with tail feathers spread in ornamental splendor would add a touch of elegance to my environment, the perfect antidote to the endless mud and frustration served up each day by my more common animals. A must-have in my opinion!

  “Neva, wouldn’t peacock eggs be cool to get?” I called out.

  She was lying on the floor working a puzzle. “I like ducks.”

  I was counting on my animal-crazed child begging for peacocks to provide a convenient excuse for further eBay shopping. Dang. “Peacocks are so pretty.”

  “I like ducks.”

  “You will like peacocks, too,” I said as I placed a bid on two blue peafowl eggs for incubation despite her lack of enthusiasm. (Blue being the common peacocks you so often see at zoos, which are actually green and turquoise in color.)

  Within an hour, I’d won the bid for twenty eight dollars. Naturally, I felt compelled to browse more, just to establish what a good deal I was getting. Low and behold, another person was offering two pure white peafowl incubator eggs, and this seller was throwing in two of the more common blues too. The only thing more striking than a beautiful blue-green peacock would be a snow-white one! The white peacock bird eggs with the two bonus blue bird eggs were forty eight dollars. Shipping added about twenty dollars to each order, so all told, I had six peacock eggs for one hundred and sixteen bucks.

  Whether or not I was going to end up with a viable baby peacock was anyone’s guess, but I did the math and felt the project was a fair risk.

  A fully-grown peacock costs about one to two hundred dollars depending on the bird’s sex. Peacocks have a wild nature and when you acquire them as adults, they often fly the coop—literally. Two hundred dollars is a hefty price tag for an animal you may only own for a day or two, but baby peacocks bond to the place they are raised. I saw a pair of baby peafowl chicks at the feed store for a hundred dollars once. Fifty dollars for one little chick seemed expensive, considering young poultry don’t always survive and the buyer had no clue what gender they were getting. Boys become the beautiful, striking peacocks that become the logo for a TV channel, but the girls grow up to be just big, grey birds. With my luck, I’d get two girls if I bought chicks.

  All things considered, starting with peacock eggs seemed like a cost effective way to go, even though sellers won’t guarantee eggs bought on the Internet because they can’t control what happens after the product is shipped. If the eggs don’t hatch, who’s to say the failure is due to a bad egg? If the post office x-rays the package, the embryo dies. Too much jostling or cold might do damage as well. Assuming the eggs arrive intact and are put in an incubator, success still depends on diligence from the person caring for the egg and a heavy dose of luck.

  Since we were now proud owners of six peacock eggs in transit, I couldn’t help but speculate what the eggs would look like. Would they be blue like a pheasant’s, or red like certain duck eggs? Maybe they’d be white like a goose egg, or green like a mallard’s. Would they be as big as a fist? Bigger? Would I know the difference between the albino peafowl eggs and those of the more common blue peacocks? When hatched, would the white and blue chicks look different, or would they be impossible to tell apart until later, when they formed feathers? How long until the chicks lose their down and start getting feathers anyway? Would the feathers on a chick hint as to whether they would grow to be boys or girls, or would I have to wait two years to know what sex the birds were? Would male peacocks fight like roosters, so we could only keep one? My questions were endless.

  Back to Amazon! I ordered more books, arming myself with as much information as possible. Once the eggs arrived, I would have to let them sit at room temperature, big end up, for 8 hours to settle. Then I’d have to put them in a preheated incubator at 100 degrees with light humidity and turn them four times a day for 39 days.

  A hen of any bird breed only turns broody after she has laid a clutch of eggs, and when she begins sitting, she stops laying. Since the time required for eggs to gather are what trigger the bird’s instinct, nature has arranged for eggs to stay “fresh” and hatchable for about six days while a clutch is being formed. This provides just enough time for an enterprising seller to list eggs on eBay and transport them to their new destination in time for a successful incubation.

  Growing a peacock from an egg is like starting a garden from seed. I would have to spend a month or so tending the project just to get to the beginning stage – that place where everyone else was buying young plants (or chicks) as starters. But as many gardeners will tell you, growing your plants from seed is not so much about the money saved as the pleasure derived from refining one’s gardening skills. I was convinced hatching a peacock from an egg would make my peacock experience more meaningful.

  The duck eggs arrived a few days later, each nestled in a cut section of a foam tube. As I unpacked the last three, a slimy coating dripped from the shells. The very last egg had a hole in the bottom. Poor devil. My first casualty.

  I didn’t know whether I was supposed to clean the eggs or leave them with that slimy residue, so I again referred to my poultry book. No answer. I didn’t want to invite bacteria into the incubator from spoiled egg slime, but I also didn’t want to wash the eggs and remove the protective film that was so important during the 39 day incubation period. I decided to wipe the eggs off with a soft, dry towel and put a frowny face on these shells. If these eggs didn’t hatch, I’d attribute the failure to my not cleaning them.

  When Neva came home from school we carefully positioned the eggs in the incubator and discussed who would take each shift
in the 39-day baby-sitting chore of turning the eggs three times a day. The robust eggs made our little lone chicken egg look like a cousin with stunted growth.

  Concerned about starting off eggs at different intervals, I bought a second incubator for the peacocks. When the next package arrived, I carefully unwrapped the contents, eager to see how these exotic bird eggs would differ from the others. The white peacock eggs were brown; the blue peacock eggs a lighter colored beige. They were all the size of a closed fist. Weighty. Substantial, yet fragile. The seller had written a nice note, and thrown in a bonus egg of a black shouldered peacock. The surprise was like getting a diamond ring in a box of crackerjacks.

  I took the eggs downstairs and placed them carefully on top of the packing peanuts to settle. I drew happy faces on one side and wrote a description of the breed lightly in pencil on the other, wanting to keep track so when the time came, I’d know what birds had hatched.

  The phone rang, and I stepped out for perhaps three minutes. When I returned, my dog was standing in the room with a guilty look on her face.

  “Maxine, what do you have?”

  The dog lowered her head and ever so gently dropped a peacock egg at my feet, then slunk outside with her tail between her legs. I crouched down to inspect one of my special white peacock eggs that didn’t seem to be damaged in any way other than dog slobber. I took the egg back to the box only to discover there, in the middle of the floor, sat another peacock egg. This one had a small crack in the bottom. As luck would have it, this was my special gift, the black shoulder egg. Granted, I didn’t even know I was getting this egg a half hour earlier, but still, I mourned the loss. I considered putting tape on the crack, but knew once bacteria invades an egg, there was no chance of a successful hatching anyway. The bonus egg had to be tossed.

  Fighting back the temper tantrum rising to a boil inside, I put the peacock eggs in my second, preheated incubator, turning down my internal heat by thinking things could have been worse. I could have walked into the room and seen my dog smacking her lips after consuming all five of the expensive globes.