Fortuitously, the fish died. The second day of school. Which also happened to be the day our mortgage refinance went through, and our home equity loan, both of which I welcomed as answers to prayers for relief from debt and overall middle-class money malaise.
I didn’t mean to finish off the fish—really. In fact, last Wednesday evening I spent a half hour or more carefully combining the “old” water from their tank with the “new” water, some of which I had allowed to distill for a day ahead of time. I say only “some of which” because when I poured the new water into about a quarter of the old, it left the tank looking pitifully low. (Why I bought a 10-gallon tank off Craigslist for two measly Koi now escapes my recollection. Like so many of my How-did-I-get-myself-into-this? situations, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”)
Actually, “at the time,” you might say I purchased the pucker-faced pets as penance for having forgotten Lucy’s Pre-Kindergarten carnival. It was a late June morning when I received a friendly phone call from the school secretary, informing me that Lucy was sitting sadly on the side of the playground while the rest of her classmates merrily escorted their parents through two-legged races, bean-bag tosses and face-painting stations. Doh!! My stomach lurched with self-loathing. The carnival had completely slipped my mind, and apparently I was alone in this heinous oversight. My little Lu was the sole soul left looking for her mother to join the celebration of early childhood education.
I quickly packed up the baby and dashed out the door, drove to the school and galloped to the rescue, hefting a 27-pound carseat like it weighed nothing. Lucy saw us coming (as did the entire playground-full of people). She ran to meet us, arms outstretched, and jumped into my one free arm. “Mommy!” she heartily exclaimed. “You didn’t forget me!” But of course, I had. So after we indulged in our fair share of popcorn and sticker-winning fun and games, we went to Walmart. To buy fish. The fish I had promised Lucy we could buy “some day.” (“Some day” when Mother needs a little retail therapy to assuage the chaos that is our family schedule.)
Fast-forward two-and-a-half months. I was the only one tending to the fishes’ survival. And I resented it. Tom had not so much as glanced at the creatures. Lucy tried feeding them a few times, dumping far too many flakes into the oversized tank. She and Reuben would watch the fish in short spurts, but get bored after a couple of minutes. Last Thursday morning, Lucy went to bid the fish farewell before boarding the bus. She gasped and shouted, “The fish are dead!!” Indeed they were.
Whether it was the chlorine or the cold that killed “Shiny” and “Goldy,” I’ll never be sure. All I know is: The same day I wrote off a bunch of bad debt, I also flushed the “guilt fish” goodbye. Coincidence?
