Goodbye Fish

Last year, we got a membership to the aquarium because I thought it would make me happy to be back in a space where I took the kids a lot when they were little. That turned out to be a massive mistake. It made me sad to be there but also sad to not use the membership. So Josh and I would go and be sad there, among the fish.

It really wasn’t good.

But we decided not to renew the membership for the time being until I could find happiness in those old spaces, so we went to say goodbye to the animals this month. We walked to each tank, and I told the electric eel and the puffins and the clownfish that we would see them again one day. We said goodbye to the sloth in the rainforest room (whom I’ve privately named Abigail), and she came down low that night so we could fully see her in the trees.

But most of all, I said goodbye to the porcupine fish, who is my favourite fish. The one they have at the aquarium feels larger than most, and ChickieNob and I call him our chonky fish. We spent a lot of time trying to coax him into a space where we could see him, but for the first time ever, he hid behind a barrier and kept peeking out at us. We like to think that he was sad to say goodbye, too. He was really the only reason I wanted to keep coming back.

Goodbye, fish. Hopefully, we will see you again in the future. (Especially you, chonky fish.)