The Power of Fish
Being an only child, I spent many days growing up entertaining myself with pets -- cats, dogs, and even a very short-lived period of time with my own guinea pig Sandy (before the smell drove my mom to sell her to a neighbor up the street). But my favorite childhood pet was my first and only fish, Goldie the Goldfish.
Goldie’s fishbowl was a simple sphere, filled at the bottom with marble-like rocks and with ample room to swim around. The bowl sat on top of a short wooden cabinet in the kitchen, next to the fridge and at perfect eye level for my five-year old height. I was enthralled with feeding her, even going as far as to sneak into the kitchen at night after my parents were asleep and pull out the container of smelly red-orange fish flakes, dropping another pinch onto the water and watching her swim to the surface in imagined joy.
The summer before I turned five, I went through a mermaid phase almost entirely because I wanted to be able to have a friend like Flounder, the talking fish in the Little Mermaid. While my grandma tried to work outside in her gardening bed, I would drag an old silver tub from underneath the deck to the middle of the green, freshly mowed grass, and ask her to fill it up like a pool. Climbing inside, I imagined myself transformed into a beautiful mermaid, soaking in the water and pretending to go on adventures with Goldie -- talking to myself the entire time. (When you have no other kids around to play along with your games, you learn to use your imagination and your resources, however limited they may be). Once I tried to sneak the fishbowl outside with me for our adventures, but my grandma quickly ended that scheme with a shrill holler from the flowerbed by the deck stairs followed by a quick BOP! on the head as I came back out of the house empty-handed. I went back to being a mermaid on my own, wishing for a friend to continue my adventures with.
Don’t get me wrong -- my childhood is filled with happy memories surrounded by my parents and family. However I always wished that I had a sibling around, someone to go on mermaid adventures with or talk to about my day. I spent time telling Goldie about my days after kindergarten, and watching her swim back and forth across the bowl for long periods of time. She was a great listener, but it wasn’t the same. To my parents, pets were the ultimate surrogate for siblings -- the ones who kept me occupied while they worked, and allowed me to love and take care of something. The only problem was that we can’t always keep the things we love around as long as we’d like.
One day after school I dropped my purple backpack onto the chair by the door and walked into the kitchen where my mom stood. Looking at her worried face, I knew something was up. The room looked different -- something had changed. That’s when I saw it. The bowl was gone, and Goldie was nowhere in sight. In disbelief, I walked over to the cabinet, asking my mom where the fishbowl was. She gave me a sad look, shaking her head and beginning to walk over to me. I was devastated.
By the end of the week my parents had bought me a tiny black kitten. Another substitute to keep me occupied.
*****
I hated being an only child growing up, even though it allowed me so many freedoms -- not having to share my beanie baby collection, getting my own room, and the fact that I was never alone thanks to the pets my parents bought for me. But at the same time, I felt a deep burden and later resentment at the fact that all of the responsibility was placed on myself. If my parents ever got into a fight about the electric bill being turned off, or differed on what restaurant to eat at for Sunday dinner, I made the final decision. It often felt as if I was choosing sides -- and that was a catch-22. Agree with mom too much and my father was sure to get even more angry, annoyed, outnumbered, and unwilling to change his stubborn opinions. If I ever supported my dad in moments of conflict, I would immediately see the flinch of disappointment in my mom’s eye -- no matter how hard she tried to hide it. She’s so sensitive that even the smallest inconsiderate mistakes on my part cause her to stay up at night and worry about what she might have said wrong.
It was difficult moments like this, which inevitably happened many times throughout my adolescence, that made me think that my parents had made a selfish decision not to have another child. Instead of thinking about how I would feel, they had trapped in the cross-fire of their stubborn and sensitive fights. My relationship with my parents was often strained growing up because of this dynamic. I would talk back, complaining about my loneliness and their selfishness. Even when things began to look better in those blissful moments of sweet harmony and accord, I could feel the resentment simmer in the back of my mind, despite being dampened down with pleasant memories and feelings. My parents didn’t understand the struggle, the lonely afternoons where I just wished I had someone to talk to, someone who could understand the exhausting back-and-forth games that my parents played. Instead, they just shoved furry friends into my arms and acted like all was well, while I isolated myself in between them -- trying to separate myself from their problems in order to ignore the inescapable calling to pick a side and what ultimately felt like allegiance to either of my parents.
*****
When my dad started calling me every Thursday night at around nine-fifteen, I began to realize that he had become lonely. Nights with my mom at work and me away for my sophomore year of college left him free to roam the empty house as he pleased, which usually resulted in him sitting in front of his new big-screen TV for hours, only to get up for a new can of Pepsi or to go outside for a cigarette. It’s not that hearing from him wasn’t nice; it was just odd -- after three years of me being away at school and this being his nightly schedule, I could tell his boredom was getting the best of him.
I set aside the time each week to listen to his stories -- frustrating customer complaints at work, his new projects sanding and painting the shed out back, how many times he had eaten Chinese take-out in the last few days. Listening intently, I intuitively knew when to add a question or a hmm to the conversation, but he did most of the talking in our often hour-long conversations. As a college student this was a lot of time dedicated to listening, time that I wasn’t used to managing. I began to dread the weekly calls, but knew that I couldn’t ignore the phone when his number popped up each Thursday. Again, I felt the burden fall on me to be there and listen to my dad in his moments of loneliness.
“Dad, why don’t you get a fish?” I asked abruptly during one of our conversations. Maybe some sort of pet would be good for him I thought, remembering my own childhood friends. I imagined a little fish bowl next to the couch and a friendly betta fish providing some sort of entertainment for him as he watched a Deadliest Catch marathon for hours on end.
I had interrupted his story, but he paused for a brief second, considering the option. “Hmmm, that might be nice. I’d have to get a filter. Hmmm… I think we still have a tank downstairs…” his words began to wander off, probably as he began to walk toward the basement door, his cell service cutting out.
That was easy, I thought to myself, proud of my solution. Maybe now he won’t have to call me as much. But I had no idea what I had gotten myself into.
*****
On my next trip home from college, I had all but forgotten about the fish suggestion. As soon as I stepped foot into the living room, my eyes went straight to the far wall where a new, gigantic 30 gallon fish tank sat. Filled with colorful aquatic plants and cheap plastic treasure chests from Petco, I saw at least fifteen fish of all sizes and colors swimming around freely.
My dad beamed as he saw me staring. “It’s beautiful, huh?”
My mom smiled, floating into the room from behind me and smiling weakly at the tank.
“I told him to just get a little fishbowl. Just one or two fish to look at,” she shook her head. I get the idea that we were both imagining the same betta fish swimming happily around its bowl on the table next to the couch.
He had overdone it, like always. My dad always had a tendency of getting more than he needed -- more food than he could eat, more ornaments than our Christmas tree could handle, more pairs of socks than he could possibly go through in a year. It was a constant and frustrating problem that my mom and I dealt with almost daily in one aspect or another. But the huge fishtank was another sort of extravagance. What the heck were you thinking, Dad? I wanted to ask, but I knew better.
He was still beaming at the fish, watching one tiny electric blue one swimming up the right side of the tank towards the top. Questioning him would be seen as a sign of disapproval, or siding with my mom. So I just sat down and listened to him talk about each of the different types of fish he had bought, the years seeming to melt off of him as he began to look like an enthusiastic ten-year old introducing his new friends to me, all smiles and excitement. I knew the happy look -- it was the same one he had whenever I was able to take a weekend off to come home. I couldn’t ruin his moment. Thinking back to my resentment of him and my mom as a child, I wondered if he realized I had done the same thing they had done to me: using pets to fill the desolate void of solitude. I smiled at the irony.
The next morning I twitched awake at the feeling that someone was standing in my room, sensing a presence watching over me quietly. My head jerked up as I saw my dad’s figure near the door, holding his morning cup of coffee in one hand, and leaning against a tall bookcase.
“Sorry nena,” he said quietly, startled that I had woken up so quickly. “Go back to bed.”
Half asleep, I groggily stirred under the covers. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I just missed you, that’s all mi amor,” I heard him say. I could always tell he was in an emotional mood when he began to use spanish nicknames.
“Miss you too dad,” I murmured, my eyes still closed. I felt him leave the room a moment later, and heard his familiar steps going down the stairs to the kitchen.
Later that morning I found out that in the middle of the night the power had gone out unexpectedly, leaving the heater in my dad’s fish tank off for hours. Only one of the fish survived. It made sense why I had sensed his sensitive side during our early morning interaction -- it’s not easy to cope with loss, even in tiny moments like that.
My mind kept going back to Goldie, and my days spent pretending I was a mermaid with her as my sidekick. This was his equivalent. Empty nest syndrome had left my dad bored and lonely -- this was the first part of his life where he had ever truly been alone most of the time, with my mom working two jobs and me out of the house. In one moment however, all of his work keeping his fish alive was thwarted, and I thought back to my distress when I saw Goldie’s fishbowl gone from the wooden cabinet. Now the tank sat in the living room filled with water, but with only a single life swimming around. By dinnertime, my dad had completed the half hour drive to Pet Supplies Plus and purchased ten new fish to replace those he lost. He proudly showed me how to acclimate them to the tank -- allowing the water from their bags to adjust to the tank’s temperature and eventually letting them swim free. He was beaming again. In that instance I was proud and happy as well. I had begun to understand my father better just from this one weekend of interaction -- seeing my dad’s true resilience and love for those he cares about.
Though he won’t admit it, I can imagine him talking to them each night during the commercial breaks, the perfect listeners for my dad’s chatty demeanor. His tank has been stocked consistently for two years now, and I always look forward to hearing in our Thursday calls about how each of the fish are holding up. Though our chats have become less frequent, this experience has shed new light for me on our complicated relationship. I see myself in his smile and his compassion, but also in his stubbornness and sensitivity. But most of all, I see our connection to being forever linked to the fish we care about so much, and the understandings they have bridged between a past of resentment and a future geared to build back love and trust into our lives -- another adventure beginning to unfold.
