When my brother Paul was six or seven, he had a pet goldfish. Fishie lived in a rather small, glass fishbowl, atop the dresser in Paul’s bedroom. (In the ‘50s and ‘60s, bowls were acceptable fish housing.)
One day, under mysterious circumstances, the fishbowl got knocked clear off the dresser and onto the floor. It shattered, and water flew everywhere. Paul yelled for our mom, who ran to help him. They both knew Fishie must be dead among the shards, or at best flopping her last flops. Paul was already mourning his lost pet
Suddenly they spotted Fishie, breathing calmly in a teeny pool of water within a four-inch-wide, intact, curved section of the glass – an astonishingly big remnant for a smashed fishbowl. How Fishie landed inside that curved piece, rather than among the thousand glass slivers or under the bed, is one of the great unanswered questions of life.
By the time Fishie died for real, she was four years old, a record in our family’s history of owning short-lived goldfish.
The poem “Valentine’s Day” is based on this true-life episode, with alterations (e.g., Paul’s fish was not red with a white heart-shaped spot on her head, and the accident had nothing to do with Dad’s hammering).
I wrote the poem less to enshrine Fishie than to recall Paul’s anguish at fearing his pet deceased. Children love their animals, regardless of species: dogs and cats, gerbils, horses, lizards, sheep, parakeets, guppies, probably even bugs. Maybe in Paul’s mind, Fishie had a heart-shaped spot on her head after all.
One day, under mysterious circumstances, the fishbowl got knocked clear off the dresser and onto the floor. It shattered, and water flew everywhere. Paul yelled for our mom, who ran to help him. They both knew Fishie must be dead among the shards, or at best flopping her last flops. Paul was already mourning his lost pet
Suddenly they spotted Fishie, breathing calmly in a teeny pool of water within a four-inch-wide, intact, curved section of the glass – an astonishingly big remnant for a smashed fishbowl. How Fishie landed inside that curved piece, rather than among the thousand glass slivers or under the bed, is one of the great unanswered questions of life.
By the time Fishie died for real, she was four years old, a record in our family’s history of owning short-lived goldfish.
The poem “Valentine’s Day” is based on this true-life episode, with alterations (e.g., Paul’s fish was not red with a white heart-shaped spot on her head, and the accident had nothing to do with Dad’s hammering).
I wrote the poem less to enshrine Fishie than to recall Paul’s anguish at fearing his pet deceased. Children love their animals, regardless of species: dogs and cats, gerbils, horses, lizards, sheep, parakeets, guppies, probably even bugs. Maybe in Paul’s mind, Fishie had a heart-shaped spot on her head after all.
