Getting To YES -- and One Dead Fish
How to parent death?
Yesterday, one of our two pet goldfish––the gold one––died. Mixer had been dying slowly for weeks, gradually spending all his time on the bottom, showing less and less interest in food, and hardly breathing. He was tough; it did take a while. But, in the end, the scum-like growth that ate away his fins finally clogged his gills and did him in.
I’d warned my eldest son that Mixer was dying, and he expressed optimism, stating that “One to four fish can live in this tank for up to two years,” a quote he’d pulled from the packaging of our purple-lidded plastic aquarium.
My youngest son, who is genuinely spooked by death, typically left the room when talk of Mixer’s health came up.
But yesterday, when Mixer died, neither child noticed. They dropped fish flakes in the tank at bedtime, watched Speedy (the survivor) as he darted around picking off scraps, and then trotted happily off to story-time.
Mixer lay on the bottom, covered in slime, eyes blank.
I informed my wife of Mixer’s demise, and my intention to remove him from the tank to keep Speedy as healthy as possible. So, with both children somehow failing to notice, I netted Mixer’s body and deposited him in a water-filled plastic cup, which I stowed in the garage. My idea was to hold a funeral service the next day, after school.
As I write this, it is already that next day, and in a moment of morning fog, I suggested that both boys should go and feed the fish before school. As soon as these words fell from my mouth, I realized what would happen: They’d notice Mixer was gone and go ballistic.
But that didn’t happen.
They didn’t notice Mixer’s absence.
Fish in this household, be they alive, dead or missing, are now entirely de rigeur, banal to the point of non-existence. The process of feeding the damn things is now more important than the actuality of the fish themselves.
So, this afternoon, we will still hold a burial for Mixer––and there may even be tears, but all that we really have to mark the passing of this brave, stupid fish, is this blog entry, a footnote in our family life, and life goes on.
Meanwhile, outside, a frigid cup balances on the paint cans of our wintry garage. R.I.P.
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On a more positive note, my play Nightjars just got selected by the Y.E.S. Festival out of Northern Kentucky University, so come April 16, 2009, all you in the extended Cincinnati region will have the opportunity to see my latest work on its feet and treading the theatrical boards.
Not that Nightjars is actually my latest. I wrote it in 2004. That’s how long it takes to test-drive a play these days––or longer.
To read an excerpt of Nightjars, click on the “Theater Work” link, above, and then go to “Writing Samples.”
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And now, back to death.
The death of high fuel prices, that is.
Did I sing the lament of cheap fuel too soon in earlier postings? I doubt it. Fossil fuels remain a depleted and finite resource, so in the end, as scarcity and drilling costs and demand catch up with us, prices will again soar. But, in the meantime, we can see the perils of futures betting. In a healthy economy, futures drive prices. And that, it seems to me, is morally suspect at best, depraved at worst. Speculators do not deserve such power.
No one does.
Not even Speedy and Mixer.
Over and out.
My Blog
Thursday, November 20, 2008
