Today, I'm looking back on decisions in my life and believing I did them for a reason I didn't yet understand. Like I was preparing myself for something else I'd have to go through in the future. I'm thinking of my actions as their own little miraculous choices that led me to my current state of being. Because life is so complicated and my place in it so interwoven in the lives of my friends and family around me. And so what I choose doesn't directly beget the future, when my future is so full of other lives and their concerns. It's pretty amazing how things come together. My little acts and decisions that are just random kind of prepare me for big junctions.
By compulsion, maybe it's a glimmer of foresight, maybe its self-actualization. I'm going to call it compulsion and consequences but consequences is a little glib, cheeky. My example in mind all stems from one compulsion: deciding to get a fish tank. Here's an act: I decided to get a little fish for my dad's desk. He works from home and spends all day sitting at his computer running the operations of a small business whose employees are always out navigating up and down the I-95 corridor. My dad is the C E O, the center of operations, without whom all of these operations would have no center. C E O. So I thought to myself, it's Christmas, and dad needs a betta fish this year to brighten his desk environment. Looking back, I guess I didn't feel that my cat coming in to claw his leg every day at a cyclically regressing time of day earlier and earlier before designated dinner time, 5 pm, until such a completely unacceptable impertinent request at 3:15 or so... I guess it wasn't enough that I'm one of those 30-year-olds who still lives at home, and on top of that, I'm not a boy on the couch or playing video games, but a crying hormonal pain in the butt who always has some teenage-drama issue to air about the whole first floor of the house. And I guess it wasn't enough that I had a son too, who, as a toddler, became such a big distraction. I couldn't keep him from running in to distract my dad, standing by his leg at the swivel chair, asking for "mud truck videos" on Youtube. And when that became too much, we had to find somewhere to go during the day. So I guess that's where the idea of the necessity of a fish tank originated. I'll spare the details but note that fish tank keeping was a long learning process for me, that somehow ended up into ballooning into three fish tanks. To be brief, the whole saga involved unacceptably small tanks necessitating a bigger tank, then experimentation with the smaller tank and a twin betta for my son leading to yet another acceptable-sized tank, and experimentation with tank mates leading to the necessity of a 20-gallon tank for some very plain yet beautiful platy fish that started small and soon clearly needed a bigger place to exercise. Well, to exist anyway. And when I was presented with a choice at the pet store for these platy fish: boy or girl? I hesitated and picked the wrong choice for me, a person who honestly, after all the challenges and struggles of yes, dead fish and snails, stinky tanks and everything, didn't really love the hobby... Sometimes I think of it as stepping in S-H-I-T, but seeing it and in some long-drawn out moment that resembles gross compulsion, where your foot is going, your brain simultaneously sees it, knows it doesn't want to go there, and yet can't summon control of the limb as it is falling through its mostly involuntary motion towards the ground... I picked girl fish. And the real question here is... what was I doing getting more fish? Apparently, girl fish basically come pregnant from the pet store, and deep down, though I was inexperienced and didn't expressly know this fact at the time, know enough about life to know better, to know it'd be trouble. To know myself, to know when I'm getting "involved" in something. And one fish did indeed grow and grow. I read a little about pregnant fish, excited and unprepared. And when she sadly died, that's what necessitated the 20 gallon tank. I believed that she hadn't been able to move around enough and also know I didn't keep the tank nice enough for her. I had struggled with preparing for the babies, had purchased some little green islands for the fish babies to hide in. Frustrated myself burying them underneath shells to make the darn things stay anchored to the bottom. I fussed and fussed with them for months, waiting the alotted estimated gestation period. Waiting for the little live fry to be born. Because while the fish were kind of plain and boring to be so much trouble, they were also excitingly and wonderfully live bearers, which I didn't know fish could be -- I never knew before then that some fish do not lay eggs. And I watched and watched this fish like a watched pot. And like a watched pot, after twice the normal gestation period... It was such a shame. And it felt kind of like an empty shame because... I don't know, I didn't truly want or need or understand the fish in the first place. I was so frustrated with those things, just like real aquarium plants that frustratingly float. Somewhere, deep and mired in this confusing fishtank-keeping quest, my plants just wouldn't thrive, and I learned gradually that it IS very important to follow the directions, and superglue your plants to a rock. This is because they do indeed want to float, and if you just bury them in pebbles like I was doing, the disturbance of the roots with regular tank cleaning will prevent plant happiness, and supergluing them to a rock, or tucking them inside a conch shell like I also did, and cramming it full of pebbles also works (re also: me ignoring why you really shouldn't put conch shells from the beach in your fishtank... another time.) Somewhere along the way, I learned to keep the tank a little better. Somewhere along the way I replaced the fish with another girl because she had been an awesome, beautiful fish, Christmas Tree Lights, thank you B for the awesome fish name. And when this fish also became pregnant, I somewhere along the way stopped trying to bury the little stubborn floating baby shelter islands. And no sooner had I let those islands float then my son shouted excitedly one day because the tank was full of hard-to-spot little orange fry (all little black eyeballs and tails) zipping over our brownish tan natural style pebble bed. Googling more, I learned that the little islands are actually supposed to float, and something clicked. I kind of believe that my first pregnant platy, Christmas Tree Lights, a wonderful and amazing tiny little being, could not bear to bear her little fry, or maybe could not conceive of bearing her little fry without the proper environment for them. I'm still sad about that but excited for the new baby fish too. They are growing and growing and new problems face me, like what on Earth to do with them... but I'm letting some time pass before that decision grows impetus. And somewhere along the way, my little fish tank became my home team, my serenity garden and my little dream of the future, because now, I have a new job as a daycare worker. And my little son comes with me to work, and together - because I have much more fun when he is with me, we spend our breakfasts and dinners in a much bigger home -- at the daycare with a whole tank of fish friends. And while we are sacrificing our family time together on weeknights to watch all the people come and go, and it's been a big transition that will hopefully lead to things we want like more independence... I think the fish tank somehow went a long way towards preparing me for the job, not literally, but in spirit. There is still a tank on my dad's desk and then the other in my son's room with all our little fish spirits who are growing and growing and will soon outgrow the tank, just like the kids at our daycare. And while it might have felt like a mistake sometimes, or a bad decision when all the difficult problems arose and I made mistakes, the impetus, getting the fish tank... I don't know, it feels like it led to the inevitable me moving on from full time parenting and back into employment and the real world. And like that too, my relationship. A conscious decision, a decision I made, and the ensuing mistakes, difficulties, work, learning -- my mom called it exciting when every day needs to be figured out. I think the positive motion, being "impelled" by some subconscious motion of the world, a motion that Wordsworth says "impels all thinking and breathing things..." to act? Fearing it's consequence? Not so at first but now yes, and cherishing it for it's severity. Having been "chastened and subdued" by nature's sublimity... In a new, unfamiliar form, getting the fishtank representing risk, action and the unknown. And then what really ensued was a new boyfriend. Also a ponderous difficult undertaking because I have a little son... no need to delve into the details of why moving on can be so difficult considering him and his feelings, but his joyful spirit, his fresh look on every new day and his open-minded innocence... made all of that so easy and beautiful, even though I had been scared for so long. Difficult too because I felt full of doubt about the person, but after accepting him, found myself in the midst of something that whether right or wrong ... not what I expected, but it was something real, which was a huge wonderful joyful thing. And what did we find at this new boyfriend's parents' house (because like the ballooning fishtank situation at my house, we suddenly found ourselves immersed in new family experiences and a whole new complex world full of loved ones and problems and joys of its own,) and despite having more people to love and cherish than I thought was right or proper or possible -- there, we found a really freaking cool fishtank. And what ensued after that was a job I guess. It's hard to tell, with all these little steps, where I am going, and when what started as a betta bowl freezing by my dad's office window one January, anxiously hovered over by me and my mom who knew squat about fish, is now three fishtanks, one of them full of fifty little black-and-orange babies, me worrying about all the kids at the day care and so grateful that my son trusts me finding my feet after taking these unknown, half-realized steps. This is life? Messy and improbable, I've heard. Gossiping about fishtanks at work, and deciding to name a fish after a student whose name was misspelled on a roster... but the misspelling because I liked it. That was the impetus for this blog post, and also the fact that it's Saturday and this blog is meant to follow my other one on Harry Potter, where B told me to blog. This one was on me, but he picked the topic again. "Fishtank." So there.
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AuthorWe are Kieran and Michelle, two 32-year-old William & Mary grads living in Virginia. Archives
March 2024
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