So long, and thanks for all the fish.

The title of my blog? It's not that I love Steinbeck. It's just that in my life, the two subjects have always been related.

Thinking back, it might have started with Felix, my carnival-prize goldfish that lived for six years and was ultimately buried in our backyard instead of flushed, as homage to its longevity, only to be later dug up and eaten by our dog. I really loved that goldfish and the entire family was impressed with its will to live.

Skip a few years. Sometime post-Felix, two of my four brothers got into the tropical fish tank hobby. They weren't that successful and there were many losses. Frankly, most of the time the tank was just dirty, which makes your house seem dirty, too. But they really tried, often on multiple tanks strewn about our house, and I never saw the appeal. Even my mom was into fish, and she always liked to have one or two of her own in a little (dirty) tank in the kitchen who she could sing to while she cooked. You know those sad, droopy, anti-social ones called Betas that are really gorgeous when they puff themselves up so you can see their flowy fins but they only do that as a defense mechanism when they feel threatened so you hold a mirror to their bowl so they'll do it and it's really exciting but then they get PTSD from the experience and die shortly after? Those are the fish she liked to have. Maybe she thought she'd be able to cheer them up? We weren't supposed to do the mirror trick, but it can be hard to resist.

I'm pretty sure she still has them. I do know that lately, she's been quoting "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" incessantly. Back to childhood. What little disposable income my parents might have had floating around at any given moment tended to go to the local aquarium stores and I just couldn't relate. I wanted shoes, everyone else wanted...fish? Eventually they moved on to saltwater, which is even more difficult and expensive to maintain, and that's where they were around the time I met my husband, Y.

I grew up in a house of testosterone, the only girl among four brothers. I couldn't relate to a lot of things. I had to be the voice of reason, the advocate for balance, and I usually got ranked on for it by them brothers.

But I always had this (apparently rediculous) notion that I'd be able to leave behind certain behaviors and interests in which I had NO interest once I had a place of my own. Suffice it to say that not only couldn't I leave behind the fish when I got married, but Y thought it sounded GREAT and FASCINATING and CHALLENGING to create one of these aquatic environments. My brother gave us (him) a 30-gallon tank and stand as a wedding present and offered his set-up services to Y for FREE! Imagine my utter joy. It was the gift that kept on "giving"- in true Y fashion, my obsessive husband became, well, obsessed, and decided that he had to take the hobby and "kick it up a notch."

He raided Amazon and bought every book known to man on how to build a stand from scratch. Then, at his grandmother's shiva, he bonded with some random guy in the neighborhood who loves to just build stuff, and who offered his garage and know-how to help Y achieve his goal. This was two summers ago. They bought wood, metal, G-d knows what else and started building a high-tech frame. Then they just...stopped. The builder guy went MIA on my poor husband and refused to answer his phone calls. Y had no idea how to proceed.

So what did he do? Give up? Not by the hairs of his chinny chin chin. He just plunked these gigantic chunks of wood and raw materials on our tiny balcony, and plunked his cash into buying a gi-normous ready-made stand and tank from the local aquarium supply shop. He bought metal-halide UV lights so powerful that we used them on our son Ariel when he was born jaundiced. Ok, we didn't actually do that, but we definitely discussed it. He bought a crapload of live rock, coral, fish, you name it- he bought it. He was a man posessed, and frankly, my words of reason couldn't penetrate the surface.

Fast-forward two years. Right now I'm sitting in our small, two-bedroom apartment, about a third of which is taken up by our 100-gallon saltwater coral reef tank. We don't actually know how many things are alive in there- Y finds all kinds of super-exciting, creepy, crabs and starfish that he "never even put in there!" Good at pretty much everything he tries to do (oh, except cleaning, which he conveniently just sucks at), Y has what I call a blue thumb, and every disgusting creature in there has just THRIVED for the last couple of years. I can't tell you how much money has gone into the tank- I'm embarrassed. It really is beautiful, objectively. And it's a good conversation starter when we have awkward company. But for the love of G-d, it is noisy, humongous, time-consuming, and expensive. It's a pain in the ass. SOOOO not my style.

My husband got a job and finally realized he had no time left for the tank. He wants to sell it, to save money, to be practical. I can't say I told him so- I have to just act like I'm going to miss it as much as he will, but, sigh, we're doing the right thing. If I gloat, he might get defensive and change his mind. I can't risk that. I WON'T risk it.

So far it hasn't sold. But his one casual mention of wanting to get rid of it has sent my imagination into a frenzy about what I'll do with the seven extra feet of space I'll have in my living room. I picture doing cartwheels, running for miles, my kids playing soccer indoors...Seven freakin' feet of freedom. I'm going to rearrange every single piece of furniture in my apartment once I have that extra wall. I'm going to do yoga all day. It's going to change my life. I can't wait.

Did I mention no one seems to want to buy the thing yet?

Anyway, I've come to realize that the evolution of our fish tank represents the evolution of my husband in the years I've known and been married to him. When Y does something, it's all the way or not at all-- he knows what he wants and likes to get it. Yet recently, he's started to see room for the gray area too. My little boy is growing up.

But when I think about it, if it weren't for that go-for-it-tenfold aspect of Y's nature, we might not be together right now or have started our family like we did.

So maybe I'll miss the tank a little bit.