"Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we." ~ Robert Fulgham
I love my husband, I really do. He is a great dad, a wonderful man, he brings great dimension to all of our lives and he is tremendously dependable.
This exemplary man, this great man, he has a fault. He doesn't think through all of the things that he does with the kids.
Let me give you the most recent example. He took a father son fishing trip with our youngest child. It would be a great time of bonding and it would be fun and he was sure they would make the most of their time together. True to form, the two men enjoyed themselves. They fished, they talked and they made memories the other Saturday morning. Driven by our youngest son's enjoyment of all things marine, Vic took him directly to the pet store. This is where things started to go downhill for me, only I didn't know it because I was at the movies with the rest of our children and my brother.
I can just see the scene, grown man and young man shopping diligently for the perfect fish tank. Both men choosing carefully which fish will bless our home, which fish will fit in with the rest of the inhabitants, which fish would bring joy to us all. Had I been there, I would have whispered a reminder that fish die. Had I been there, I would have been the voice of reason describing the fallout when the children wake up to the pretty fish upside down and eyes bulging out at the top of the bowl. I wasn't there.
Fast forward six days, if you will and add one small detail; wonderful husband has flown out for a month long school. Of course.
It was day two when I realized that the fish weren't calming down. They were racing in circles around the bowl as if trying to get out. The children believed that they were playing with each other, I found their behavior disturbing. In the back of my mind I thought that we may not be good for fish with all of the activity in this house. I can only imagine what the comings and goings of this house look like on the other side of magnified and distorted glass. Never mind the thought of seeing me first thing every morning.
It was day three when the yellow one died. First we thought he was doing tricks, then we realized that he was just caught in the current of the bubbles and the filter. Silence fell in our house. For a brief moment I thought I'd need to call one of the 1-800 numbers that military families have for crisis. Luckily, the kids found solace in the other fish and vowed to find him a friend first chance we got to return to the pet store.
Today, I awoke to the red fish lying dead in the rocks. I scooped him out and placed him in the ziploc bag that houses the yellow fish that is hiding in the fridge behind the egg carton. Apparently, to cash in on the 14 day refund on fish you have to return to the store with the corpses. You have to bring some water too so they can test to see where you went wrong when setting up the tank.
It took the kids a few hours to notice that the fish wasn't there anymore. I can understand this, the poor buggers never lived there too long. In fact, we had the fish tank empty for more days than it was inhabited. They were devastated. They were perplexed. They have survived it. I , on the other hand, am emotionally spent.
Since Vic's departure I have become a coroner, a crime scene investigator, a marine biologist, a liaison with the pet store, a seasoned murderer who has hid the bodies and a cover up artist. It hasn't even been a week.
The kids are all off playing with friends, it's time to take the baggie and the remains and find out what happened. There goes another perfectly normal Friday night for this military wife. I've heard those types of nights are overrated anyway.