"Contemplating marriage, I gave Carrie a sapphire ring and subsequently in the romance she gave me a Donald Roller Wilson oil painting of a monkey in a blue dress next to a tiny floating pencil..."

"... which I kept for years until it began to frighten my children. One of the most brilliant and hilarious minds of our eon, Carrie would say things like: 'I love tiny babies. When they cry they turn red and look like screaming tomatoes.' OR 'This romance is finished the second you let out even a threep. I’ll be sick for a year.' AND 'You have a jawline, hold your chin up otherwise you look like a tuna.' From then on I would identify myself on the phone as Tuna Neck."

Dan Aykroyd writes about the time he and Carrie Fisher were a pair.

I'm fascinated by the idea of a couple where the man would give the woman a sapphire ring and the woman would give the man a painting of a monkey in a blue dress next to a tiny floating pencil — and it's not the kind of situation where she's not a painter of paintings of things like monkeys in dresses near gravity-defying writing implements but she actually went out and located an artist who did and bought the thing for the man who might have imagined himself a bit individualistic for going with sapphire instead of the diamonds those ordinary men get for their ladies.

I do like the meeting of the minds in blueness — sapphire and monkey dress. 

Here's a Pinterest page of paintings by Donald Roller Wilson. They are quite fabulous. An example:



I can't imagine getting one of these — especially when it was a gift selected by someone you loved — and then getting rid of it because it scared your children. Put it in a room where the children don't go or hang a drapery in front of it to be pulled back when the children are in bed. Wait for the children to grow up. Daughters rescued from nightmares of dubious monkeys.

I'll bet they'd like that painting now.