Designer Fish

The first time my mother became interested in tropical fish, I was astounded. While she had tolerated my cat, an assortment of frogs, lizards and horned toads and a parakeet, my mother never seemed to me to be a person who cared much for pets. One Friday evening I was sitting home mopey because I didn't have a date and had to spend the evening at home with nothing to do but watch TV. I was 16. My mother danced in after work with a water-filled plastic bag in one hand and a small aquarium in the other. She commandeered my help in setting up the aquarium.

We carefully read all the instructions together and decided to place the aquarium on top of the TV. The plastic bag contained a tiny blowfish and miniature seahorse. These were saltwater fish, so we had to add salt and check the salinity of the water until it was at the optimum level for the fish. Then the fish in their bag had to float in the aquarium water until the bag water and the aquarium water temperature was the same. When the fish were released into the aquarium, they explored their new home cautiously. My mother could not stop exclaiming about how cute they were, and she relayed every movement each fish made with all the excitement of a sports announcer. I went to bed several hours later with the image of her eyes, distorted through the water, staring intently at her new darlings.

Every night when my mother arrived home from work she would go immediately to the aquarium to study the fish and see what new tricks they were up to. The blowfish became quite friendly and would stare back at my mother and follow her finger on the glass with equal interest. The seahorse, on the other hand, attached its tail to the stem of the green plant and bobbed blandly back and forth among the upright leaves, its tiny eyes constantly scanning for food. Once in awhile it would break loose and float about, the tiny fin on its back whirling like a small fan. It's true these fish were incredible creatures. Although I preferred furry pets you could touch, I have to admit that I grew to enjoy watching the fish, too. There seemed little need to turn on the TV for entertainment. I'm not sure how it was for the fish, but watching them had a soothing effect on my mother and me. It was a sad day when I returned from an overnight with a friend to learn that the seahorse had passed on to happier trails. The blowfish did not last too much longer. We kept the fascinating seahorse skeleton as a memento for many years. 

Although I never had the enthusiasm for fish that my mother had, I and my youngest son have had various fish pets over the years. There was Bright, my son's pearl scale goldfish, that he found floating belly up one morning. We held a meaningful funeral service for Bright by scooping out a place at the base of the rosebush by our front gate, carefully placing Bright in it and covering the pet gently with dirt. I said a few words about how Bright would now provide important nutrients to the rose bush. My son shed a few tears before bravely announcing, "Bright, you were a good pet," and then we rushed off, he to Kindergarten and I to work. And there was Alpha, the first in a line of several blue Bettas I owned. Alpha survived one especially cold winter in his small bowl wrapped in a sweater under an incandescent light and went on to live for three more years. I found him one morning, a dry blot on the bathroom floor where he had fallen after jumping out of his bowl.

My interest in fish could not come close to that of my ex-husband's aunt and uncle. We visited them once in their Sacramento home where the kitchen and family room were stocked floor to ceiling with fish tanks full of fancy guppies. They spent every moment we were with them catching fish in small nets, moving them to other tanks and changing the water in still other tanks. Conversation was challenging, but they never dropped a tank or spilled a fish. When I inquired about why they had so many, they said they had started with just a few which had quickly had babies and the babies had babies and now here they were. The guppies were fascinating because of the variation in tail color that occurred within just a few generations. I could see why they had trouble getting rid of any. It would be hard to flush them down the toilet, and the pet stores could not purchase enough to keep up with the birth rate. I was sure that by the time we came to visit again, there would be no room left in the house for us.

This afternoon I attended a meeting at the home of Tom Berg, President of the California Literary Arts Society. Tom has two huge aquaria in his home, and each is different. One has lots of leafy plants and colorful fish in it, and the other has few plants with an interesting assortment of black and white fish that have red on their snouts, fins or tails. These fish have models of classical ruins in which to move about and hide. I was immediately impressed by the cheerful busy-ness of the more brightly colored fish and the aura of calm the black and white fish with their red highlights projected. I could imagine myself, depending upon mood, buoyed up with enthusiasm by the interaction of fish and plants in one tank or brought to deep reflection on the meaning of life by the ruins and placement of red on the fish in the other. Television cannot offer anything to compete with this.