Time for Letting Go
By JAN BENZELThis is a love story, and a fish story. It’s about a girl, her fish, and the shop around the corner.
It’s also the story of a nest, my family’s.
We’re taking the younger of our two children to college this weekend. Next week I’m moving too, to Paris, where I’ll start a new job. In New York our family will soon be based a few blocks away from the apartment we’ve lived in all our children’s lives, in a somewhat smaller nest.
At the moment home doesn’t feel like home; it’s more of a giant staging ground for the various lives and homes to be. Everything is half-packed. We bang our shins on mini-fridges in the front hall destined for dorm rooms on two different campuses. Chaos is the only constant, and emotions are running high. I’ve had a hard time sleeping. I wake up in the middle of the night a lot. I’ve been worrying about the fish.
They are clownfish, and there are two of them. You probably know what they look like because of the movie Finding Nemo, which, of course, is why we have them in the first place.
Now, I am not really an animal person, despite having grown up on a farm. I freely admit to looking forward to a pet-free existence in Paris. But my older daughter is an animal person, a bug girl, a snake girl – she loves creatures of all kinds. As any parent knows, when your child has an interest, soon it’s your interest too. So, somewhat to my amazement, we’ve had creatures of all kinds dwelling in our apartment over the years: grasshoppers, chameleons, mice, frogs, a turtle, hamsters, cats and a dog. The chameleons, turtle and hamsters were visitors: class projects that became foster pets during spring or summer vacations. The teachers somehow knew to zero in on us when animals needed a home. How could I say no?
(I did say no to the snake. That’s how we ended up with the dog.)
There are all kinds of stories about the animals: the grisly end met by the mice, the rigor mortis of the frog when given a loving bath in warm water, the alarming skin-shedding of the chameleons, the turtle who took a nasty swipe and left a bloody scratch on the face of a curious cat, the grasshopper who adopted my daughter, riding on her shoulder and in her silky hair for days during a trip to the beach.
But this is a fish story. Becca really wanted a fish tank of her own, and she wanted it to be a salt-water tank. The guy at the pet store down the street flat-out refused to sell us a tank — or any fish — until we read “Salt-Water Aquariums for Dummies.” We bought it, read it, and were all in.
That tank gave Becca untold pleasure. She pored over fish-related Web, carefully chose what to add to her marine world, saved up her allowance for pieces of live rock, and started spending afternoons every weekend at a pet shop on Broadway at 98th Street called Petqua, where the downstairs is painted as an aquatic land. A giant turtle named George roams free and a parrot, often on the shoulder of one of the owners, chats with shoppers, who gaze through glass at the many-hued and wildly shaped fish in both fresh and salt-water tanks. The owners and their employees were all knowledgeable and gentle, and patiently answered endless questions from all comers.
Various new beings joined our tank: a great colorful coral-banded shrimp; snails and hermit crabs, the janitors. There was a beautiful pink fish, shy and retiring, that only came out for breakfast, then flicked back to a safe haven in the tank’s rocky caves. Coral grew, too.
Over the years there were lessons in salinity and mortality, Darwinism and the physics of suction. You learn that one fast: changing the water involves sucking on a tube until the water is just far along enough to work as a siphon from the tank. Suck too hard and you’ve got a nasty mouthful of dirty, salty aquarium water. There were moments of high drama: one day the water level was too high and one of the clowns made a break for it, Nemo style. He he landed on the floor, luckily for him, far enough under the dresser that the cat couldn’t get him, where he was flopping limply. As soon as he was scooped up and dropped back in the tank he was swimming around as if nothing had happened. Then there was the tragedy of the anemone. Clowns like to nest and breed in the flowing flowery arms of anemones, and so, after much deliberation, we added one – only to find an overgrown bully of a hermit crab ripping the poor delicate thing to shreds. We rushed it back to Petqua, but it was too late. It was D.O.A. The crab went too; we didn’t want a killer in our midst.
And there were the two coveted yellow gobies, tiny flashes of yellow, that took months to locate. Within a day of their arrival, one became lunch for the shrimp. We could see the yellow glowing in his blue belly like a lightbulb.
But back to college, and emptying nests: the subjects we’re trying our hardest to distract ourselves from this week. If you’re a mom or dad, you may have been a little weepy lately. Or if you’re a student heading off to college, chances are your parents have been a little weepy, or maybe a little clingy.
This is a big week for first year students, as they call freshmen now. There are a lot of kids arriving on campuses, ready to start their new lives, having to say goodbye to their parents.
When we dropped Becca, her little sister was with us, and served well as comic relief. Every time I looked a little teary she’d come out with: “Uh oh — here come the waterworks!” and I’d have to laugh. This year she’s the one going. I’ll do my best to keep the waterworks to a minimum but I’m not making any promises.
Still, the clownfish are already helping in that department.
This week Becca made the huge decision that it wasn’t practical to try to move the aquarium, either to her dorm room or to our new home. Luckily Petqua, which suffered a fire three years ago, has taken in the fish. The shop has a big sign in its window: “Reserved for Nemo and Family.” The Nemos are there now, downstairs, with George the Turtle and the talking parrot. They live in a beautiful tank where the owners grow coral when the weather is right for it and are cared for by a gentle soul named Iggy. They’re not for sale. Becca is happily back on her campus, and now she’s the one helping first-year students move in to their dorms.
When we released the clownfish into the tank the other day they gave each other a quick, happy fish hug and swam off to explore their new surroundings.
We’ll visit. They’re in a good place.
NYT, August 27, 2010
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