Pictograms

Some years ago a sister living in Northern California sent me a small slip of laminated paper she'd retrieved from a box of Cracker Jacks - remember those? "A prize inside every box!" On the fortune cookie size slip was a pictogram riddle  "Name this major city in the State of New Mexico", a string of short syllables, and a blue and black pencil drawing of a turkey with a personified grin. On the flip side was an annotation of the word it was after; the designer was referring, of course, to Albuquerque - which really doesn't, but does, rhyme with turkey.

This late, lazy Saturday night my husband and I are holed up in a hotel. He lies beside me lightly snoring. I've braved the pool's adjacent, lukewarm Jacuzzi in, you guessed it, the "Duke City" of Albuquerque, New Mexico. We needed a getaway and hit the highway headed due south for our select, mini-vacation main attraction, the city’s Bio Park hosting a lulling garden, popular zoo, and dimly lit aquarium. We realized we'd not been to the latter together since our daughter, now a sophomore in college, was probably five. We strolled the blue sun variegated tulip and tiny rose wedding gardens; snapped pictures of the tall, vine enshrined metal dragon sentinel, and sighed at the chiseled pagodas shaded by Japanese red maple like blood lace.

But it was by far the aquarium that gave us the much needed pause with its (deceptively) lilting jelly fish enclosed in broad Plexiglas cylinders; kids freed from strollers and fathers alike waiting on the whimsical now-you-see-me-now-you-don't sea turtle in the biggest tank with cruising shark and stealth barracuda. No, this wasn't the often sought after Monterey Bay attraction nor the stunning white filigree and glass of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park Conservatory. But it was an easy alley, all the same, exiting onto  temporary paradise of wandering, and watching as children squealed, pulling back from the glass panorama when the sting ray bellied up to the window. All of us simultaneously mesmerized and boisterous, silhouetted against the thin afternoon membrane. Floating through this hot house of unicorn fish with Peter Max-like Yellow Submarine profiles, hide and seek lobsters with fanned tails the color of russet feathers, and sea horses whose offspring, the signage reported, are born the size of an eyelash. 

"Look there's Nemo, Mommy!" exclaimed an excited witness of a girl leaning out from the safe haven arms of her mother, spotting tucked inside undulating thumb corral the tiniest striped fish of orange and black that she recognized from her own prize in every cellophane box movie. And I was grateful in these suspended moments for the recognizable icons, clown fish or lion fish, palm-sized gift images of Thanksgiving fowl rendered in pencil, that carry us swooning into the language of the very specific, pastel aquatints and a living desert waiting for rain.