Are we leaving Fishbombs or Roses?

Good morning,
I pray that the day is finding you well.

Memory is a funny thing.

I will go a long time without thinking of something or someone and then when I do it is as if my memory is doing a data dump on my consciousness.

I haven’t thought about Fishmonger for years, but ever since the other night she has been “on my brain.”

Fish lived to be almost twenty years old and so she was around from the time I was six until after I had left the house for good, which anyone that has children in college would understand this statement, I boomeranged for a while. Just when my parents thought I was grown and out of the house I would come running through the front door usually with an armload of laundry. Sometimes I would tie a ribbon around it and try to pass it off as a gift for my mom.

It never worked.

All this to say that Fish grew up and grew old.

As Fish aged her hobbies changed. Where once she could not get enough of “mousing.” She didn’t seem that excited about the whole thing later in life. In fact on one of my boomerang trips I sat with Fish on the floor in the basement of my parent’s house watching “Nightline with Ted Koppel.” As we sat there watching Ted espouse his journalistic wisdom a mouse ran by, well not exactly ran, more like jogged (if mice can jog) right in front of both of us.

Fish didn’t move.

I thought she must be asleep. I looked down at her, she looked up at me as if to say, “What, I’m retired.” It was left to me to get up, catch the mouse, put the mouse back outside, which I am sure the mouse spent little time coming back in from where it was deposited.

So Fish found new hobbies.

Her new favorite hobby was to come and visit people as they came into the house and sit in the living room. She would say hello and then leave the room only to sneak back into the room behind the couch and leave what affectionately became known as a “Fishbomb.” These were rancid, slow moving smell fronts that always seemed to stall out in the middle of the room. Usually the only relief that one could find was to go outside until it dissipated, mom would retaliate with sufficient and often copious amounts of Lysol.

I grewup with three sisters. With sisters comes the inevitable boyfriend. Boyfriends have the annoying habit of hanging out at their girlfriend’s house.
As you might guess these boyfriends always had a “first time” at their girlfriends house.

The first time was always the same.

Fish would come into the living room and say hello.

Fish would then leave the room.

Fish would then sneak back into the room behind the couch.

Fish would leave a “bomb.”

Fish would then leave the room.

People would look at each other each knowing that “they did not do it.”

People would leave the house and mom would come in to battle the “Bomb.”

You are probably wondering where all this is going?

As I thought about Fish and the “Fishbomb.”

I thought about how we sometimes leave a wake of smell, pain behind us, when we are focused on ourselves and not on others.

I thought about how when we focus on others and their needs above our own we leave roses and smiles.

The question is how do we want to leave others as we leave the room, smelling roses or Fishbombs?

Something to think about.

Blessings,