Piscis Fugit

Maybe 10 years ago my daughter won a goldfish in some sort of raffle or such. Cost her one quarter. 25 cents. She named the fish "Adele" and we put her into a small fishbowl. She outlived my admittedly pessimistic expectations, and soon outgrew the bowl. We got her a bigger one. Ultimately, we bought a nice 20-gallon tank, with filter and a gravel bottom. Which is where she's been for the past several years, in a corner of the "family room," where we enter and leave from the garage, and walk past her. When we are not watching television or movies on bigger screen, no one spends much time in there anymore. I don't know much about goldfish mentality, I know they are not schooling fish, so I doubt she got lonely. But she sure seemed like she did. And it just began to seem unnatural, and I told myself that it was somehow cruel to keep her in that fashion, and have her grow old and die in that tank, or whatever replacement we provided.

We humans wandered the house and the world, while Adele patrolled the relatively small, and getting smaller, realm of her tank. Daughter left for college and is now living on her own, stopping by only rarely (especially in pandemic times) and my only contact with Adele was to notice her swimming toward the front of the tank when I walked by, a reminder to feed her. Which I did, a couple times a day.

Anyone who has had goldfish knows that they are a fairly dirty fish, and her excrement maxed out the filter every couple weeks. And the buildup of other waste meant that the water had to be mostly replaced every couple months, which involved a siphon and bucket and long trips with said bucket sloshing as I walked.

Finally, recently, and reluctantly, I decided it was time for a breakup.

No one I knew wanted her and anyway transferring her would be a struggle. It's illegal -- and ecologically unsound (and dangerous to the fish) -- to release goldfish into the wild, even though there is a nice pond not far from my house that doesn't drain into any stream.

Then I discovered a pet store that has a large display tank for goldfish that also sells them to stock koi ponds. And that accepts "donated" fish.

So I scooped up Adele in plastic container (realizing just how big and hefty she had become, relatively speaking) and we went for a car ride across town, the first real interaction we had had in years. I walked in, talked briefly to the fish lady, who commented on the beautiful veil-like tail and bright colors, and transferred Adele into a small bucket for acclimation. And I said goodbye, faster than I had intended to, because the symbolic magnitude of the moment, this end of a an era, threatened to rise up beyond my control, and I'd be damned before I would openly cry in front of a stranger over some stupid goldfish.

And that was that. Now every time I enter the house I see that empty tank (which will soon be donated to St. Vincent dePaul) and I recall her, and the once-little daughter who loved her so much, and I am saddened at another ending in my life.

G'bye, Adele. Wherever you end up, I hope there's a good ending to your story.