Becca Stevens - Goldie, the Goldfish

 

For the past 25 years, I have participated in the annual endurance sport known as The Family Vacation. [audience laughter] And our family has been pretty adventurous. We've gone to Egypt and Rome. We've gone to Botswana. Last year, we hiked in Northern Canada for three days. 

 

In 2007, we rented an RV and we decided to take all our kids and go cross country. And on the second morning, when my husband overestimated the height of the underpass [audience laughter] at the fast-food restaurant and knocked off part of the top of the RV, including the air conditioning unit, we decided weren't RV people. [audience laughter] So, the next year we decide we're going to play it safe, set the bar low and we get in our minivan and we decide to go to Seaside, Florida. 

 

Now, packing a minivan with three kids at that time, 8,12 and 16 years old, is really an undervalued skill in my opinion. We had to pack everything. They needed drawing pads, paper, they wanted Nintendo Game Boys, they wanted the portable DVD player, they wanted pillows and blankets. I needed my crocheting. My husband needed a whole pile of CDs from the demos he had made all year, so he could check out the work he had done and the pitches he could make. We packed it all. That does not even include the floats that I packed because they charge you an arm and a leg if you wait to the beach to buy your floats. 

 

We had to pack fishing gear. We had to pack goggles and fins and beach chairs. We needed to pack all the staples for the week and the snacks. That doesn't even start with the clothing. So, we over packed, and we started out on a blistering global warming peak day in July in Nashville, Tennessee, to drive eight hours south to where it's hotter and more humid. [audience laughter] We made the eight-hour drive. And for us, what was a world record of 12 hours. [audience laughter] Because we needed to stop for every individual child's bathroom time. We had to stop halfway through Alabama for the sign that said fresh Georgia peaches. 

 

At the border, when you get to Alabama and Florida, it says the world's best burgers. And who can't stop for that? So, it's after dark when we get there. And the first thing I unload is my favorite thing, the arts and crafts. I lay them all on the table. The two older kids are rolling their eyes and think, God, another year of us having to do beach tie dyes, art journals, hook potholders. [audience laughter] My all-time favorite, the beach terrarium. [audience laughter] We're putting all that. I'm laying it all out. My husband is popping two beers, just as he's getting ready to start dinner after he drives all day. The kids are laughing. 

 

And despite all the stress, I promise you, the first day of vacation is one of my favorites. I love everybody laughing. I can hear boys laughing and I'm like, “Are they wrestling? Are they going to beat each other up?” It's always that way with kids. It's just this activity and energy. I loved it. Next morning, I get up and we're getting ready for the second leg of this endurance sport, which is get everything to the beach. And so, I decided to take a few minutes before that and go out to the porch that's facing the beach and just take a few minutes of peace. 

 

The sun is rising in bands of lavender. It's so beautiful it makes my jaw clench. My jaw always clenches when I see something really stunningly beautiful like yellow and purple wildflowers together. And so, I was sitting back there and my phone rings and it's the house sitter who says, “Everything is fine.” She's taking care of the pets and stuff. “Everything is fine, except in the middle of the night, Goldie died.” 

 

Goldie was the goldfish. It was too late to ask for an autopsy, but I was very suspicious, because we'd only been gone 26 hours, but she had already flushed her down the toilet. I laughed, because I was verklempt a little bit. I just got off the phone and thanked her for all she was doing. I went in to tell my family, and I said, “Hey, everybody.” I look around. Everybody's just lounging around the living room in various forms of repose, and they look like what my mom used to called lollygaggers. [audience laughter] 

 

You know, the older two just watching tv, the youngest one trying to put together a Star Wars Lego set. My husband with his feet hanging over the side of the couch, strumming the guitar, and I say, “Hey, you, guys, Goldie died.” And everybody's like, “Okay.” Nobody missed a beat on the guitar. [audience laughter] Nobody turned down the TV. And my youngest son, Moses, who was actually Goldie's owner, who had named her that amazing name, [audience laughter] looks at me and goes, “Hey, can we get a dog now?” [audience laughter] 

 

Nobody was trying to be mean or insensitive. It was a goldfish. But I just took a minute, and I decided to walk back to the porch and just think about why I was having some feelings when I was feeling my feelings, and walked back out there and decided to walk on the beach. And within about five minutes, I'm crying. I could not figure out why. It's ridiculous. 

 

Now, Moses and I had won Goldie at the Tennessee State Fair the fall before when he had thrown ping pong balls into a small bowl. He was so proud. You know, it only cost us $10 [audience laughter] worth of freaking ping pong balls to win this fish that's worth less than a dollar on the open market. [audience laughter] But he was proud. The carnival hawker put her in a bag, tied the top, this plastic bag and he walked around with her all night. I knew she was a survivor. [audience laughter] 

 

She even did well in the container. She was in confinement in a vase until we could get her a proper home, so we could spend another $50 on a tank that was an underwater beautiful wonder world. I mean, it had pebbles, it had plastic beach trees, it had an underwater bridge that she could go in and out of, so she could have some quiet time. [audience laughter] Moses and I, in our crazy lives, in our busy, noisy lives of our family, when Goldie came and graced our lives, we started this routine at night of reading and feeding her and snuggling in the bed and watching her grow. She was growing this beautiful translucent tail. We bought a special light so it would glow at night. Because it was magical to him, it felt magical to me. 

 

So, I'm walking by the ocean and I am now openly weeping and I am laughing at how ridiculous it is, [audience laughter] that I am walking by an ocean with a million fish in it. We have actually brought tools of destruction for those fish [audience laughter] and I'm crying over a goldfish. It feels more ridiculous, because I felt like my whole life, I had handled grief so well. I mean, my first memory is my father dying when I'm five years old by a drunk driver. My mom died when I was 30 of a terminal brain illness. My sister died of aneurysm. Not to mention the fact that I'm an episcopal priest, I've presided at probably 100 funerals. 

 

I'm the founder and president of Thistle Farms, a community of women survivors. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

Thank you. Thank y'all. Thank you. Thank you. I have walked with women through some horrific stories. And so, the fact that I'm being undone by a goldfish is surprising to me. [audience laughter] But in all honesty, my tears are now down my face and hitting the sand. So, I decide to sit down and I decide to take a moment and look out unto the tide, where it's the closest thing I know to where the eternal and the temporal meet. 

 

I sit there and I realize that in addition to being the only person in the whole wide world that's ever going to grieve that goldfish. [audience laughter] And so, I am also grieving the fact that she was what helped me hang on to being a mom to young kids. That was it. I no longer had to cut my kids food up. I didn't have to carry them in the grocery store when they would get tired. And pretty soon, I wasn't going to get to pack a bunch of crafts and all the stuff they wanted for vacations. Goldie was it. 

 

Moses wasn't going to want to buy another fish and snuggle me at night and read and look at her amazing tail. With the death of Goldie, I was saying goodbye to that. And so, I gave myself over for a minute to the great gift of grief, which says, when we truly love something, it opens those spaces in us and we are allowed to weep. We give ourselves that permission. Goldie reminded me in such a graceful way, and so less dramatically than all the other traumas in this world, how childhoods pass so quickly about how we don't get to choose what we grieve. 

 

Our hearts will grieve what they will. And that in grieving, it is this beautiful way of saying thank you. I loved you. And so, I sat there and wept for a minute and gave thanks, as I was really saying to my children, thank you. I loved being a mom to you and I miss it and I'm so proud of you. Rest in peace, Goldie.