Fidelity to the Law

I am not, in fact, referring to the most recent Supreme Court nomination.

Fidelity to the most predictable and most true of all the laws of nature, that's what I'm referring to here.

Some of you have already heard via my Facebook post, it's sad but true. We lost little Flippy this weekend.

Flippy the Fish. You know, Patty the Fair Fish's adopted brother?

He fought hard, but in the end, fidelity to that most inevitable law of nature won out. Flippy was flushed down that holy well of goldfish light, on a Sunday no less. (That's the goldfish Sabbath.)

Flippy was Soren's fish. Soren was having a good day, a great day rather. He was selling fresh lemonade on the end of our driveway with his sisters and the neighbor girls. We didn't want to burden him with that information just yet. Taylor, neighbor girl, came through the house on her way out to pick some more lemons off the tree when she noticed me peering into the fish tank.

Poor TayTay. She was the first little guy to see Flippy in the throes of death. Not the kind of peaceful goldfish death when you just happen to wake up one morning and find 'em dead. Floating serenely. No sirree. Full on death throes.

Finally, it was over. Lars flushed him off to meet his maker. That was the end of it.

Petra, most observant child, noticed Flippy's absence.

Holy Hell ensued. She screamed and wailed and cried at the top of her ever-loving lungs. She cried to the mountain tops.

"Ohhhh, Flippy's dead."

Flippy can't be dead, she stated calmly. She began to search. More and more frantically as the moments past. Flippy? Where are you Flippy?

She turned to me. She turned to Daddy. She turned to Patty and Andrea. She begged us all for answers. Who would do this, she implored. Who did this?

She blamed PetCo for selling us a "bad fish."

She blamed the guy "who makes babies and fish get born."

She got mad. Really, really mad. She stomped her feet. She threw herself onto the ground and banged her little fists on the floor until they were red. She said bad words like "hate" and "stupid."

Then she got forlorn. She sighed over and over again. She wailed because Flippy was gone and "it huwts so badly." She began to mutter under her breath about "poow, poow Flippy . . . he didn't get much time here . . . now he won't get a sunken treasure ship to play in . . . all those poow childwen in Iwaq and Afghanistan who have no school and have to covew theiw faces . . . I lost my dwess at the beach . . . Maggie's gonna die too . . . Mommy's gonna die . . . Meme died . . . Gwandma Peg died . . . evewybody dies . . . ow, they don't get to go to school and have to covew theiw pwetty faces . . . then they die."

Lars tried to focus her. They sat on the rug, commonly referred to in our house as Tova's Rug, and Lars said to her, "let's just talk about Flippy Petra."

"Tell me what you liked about Flippy."

"I loooooooooved uh uh uh heeeeeee Flippy. I loved him so much."

"And what else?" She's brings up the"twoops in Iwaq" and he refocuses her.

"Flippy was so cute. He looked like a cow, eh-cept he wasn't, he was weally just a fish."

On it went.

Finally, finally, she took a deep breath, "he's just dead now, isn't he?"

Shoulders hunched over, eyes to the ground, she slipped off to her bedroom.

It was like the Kubler-Ross stages of grief compressed on fast-forward. Wiped Lars and me out, had us in tears with all her pain and agony.

And that was how it went last night. Of course, if you're a neighbor of ours then you heard the whole darn thing.