Fish Eyes

Write about a memory you have about fish.



She was crying again!

The little girl couldn't understand why the new baby cried so much and why she had to have so much attention. Every time the baby cried, Mommy stopped whatever she was doing to go check on the new baby. If Mommy was playing with the little girl, she would tell her to go watch the fish swimming in the aquarium until Mommy came back.

The little girl loved watching the fish swim, they were pretty to look at and it was fun to watch the fish dive to the bottom and then soar back up to the top. Sometimes they came up to the glass and peered out at her. She liked how she could see her reflection in the glass, too. She tried to see her own reflection while looking at the fish, but it was hard to do except when she crossed her eyes, which just gave her a headache, and anyway she was tired of looking at the fish.

This time when the baby had started to cry and Mommy left the room, the little girl had been playing with her brother, who was playing with a rubber hammer pounding blocks together.

“Do you want to try?” her brother asked, holding out the hammer to the slightly older girl.

“Ok,” she accepted the toy and banged it against the block a few times, trying to drown out the sound of the baby’s cries.

“Mommy said to watch the fish,” little brother reminder her and she looked over at the aquarium, it’s glass showing a reflection of the two kids sitting on the floor with a pile of blocks.

She got up and peered into the aquarium, watching the fish swim up and down, up and down, while the baby cried and cried and she could hear Mommy singing a lullaby trying to make the baby stop.

She held her hands up to her ears to try to shut out the sound, but because she was still holding the hammer she hit herself in the head. Urgh, she wished that baby would stop crying! The fish came up to the glass and peered out at her, and for just an instance she thought she could see her own reflection at the same time she was seeing the fish. She wondered what the fish would do if she touched the glass with the hammer, but she never expected what happened next, when the glass cracked with the soft impact and the water began seeping down its side.

Only now it wasn't the baby who was crying, but little brother as well, and then Mommy came back, and she wasn’t singing a lullaby any more.