When my oldest daughter was five, she wanted a goldfish more than anything in the world. After weeks of begging, I finally caved in and took her to the local pet store. She picked out two 12-cent goldfish and named them Sparkles and Bows.

Sparkles and Bows grew… and they grew…and they grew. They grew until they couldn’t turn around in their little 3-gallon tank anymore. They grew so fast that they had bare spots on their bodies where the scales hadn’t had a chance to fill in yet.
Occasionally we’d feel sorry for them and we’d fill up our bathtub and put them in it to swim. We had to make sure the bathroom door was tightly closed so that our kitty couldn’t get in and make a snack out of them. The kids thought it was neat to watch Sparkles and Bows swim in the tub. My husband thought I was crazy.

When Sparkles and Bows were two, Santa brought them a new 10-gallon home. They loved their new home and they happily swam under little bridges and over plants. Sparkles and Bows continued to grow and grow. Whenever someone came to our house for the first time, they would notice the fish immediately and always comment that they were the biggest goldfish they had ever seen.
The fish always seemed to grow much faster when we would go away on vacation and have the neighbors feed them. One day after just such a vacation, I called the pet store in a panic…just how big do goldfish get? I didn’t like the answer. I was scared to death that I would need to fork out the cash for a 20-gallon tank for my two 12-cent goldfish.

My husband wanted to get a salt-water tank. He threatened to flush the goldfish many times so that we could get more interesting fish. Each time he threatened, he was met with anguished cries from the kids, “NO, DADDY, NO!!! YOU CAN’T KILL SPARKLES AND BOWS!!!” How long do goldfish live anyway? We thought, they should die soon, shouldn’t they?

When Sparkles and Bows were about three, they developed some type of tail rot overnight. Their fins were raggedy and sad looking; we didn’t think they’d make it through the day. My husband said, “Let’s flush them tonight!” The kids said, “Mommy, pleeeeease, save our fish!” The kids won, we gave Sparkles and Bows antibiotics and they regained their health, their fins repaired.

They were too big for normal goldfish food anymore; we had to feed them larger pellets. We experimented with them, feeding them lemons, peas, corn and squash. They ate everything except broccoli. My seven-year-old said, “Mom, you’re the only one who likes broccoli. See? I told you so.”

When Sparkles and Bows were four, they were too big to swim under their bridge anymore. They ate all of the plants we put in the tank. They could jump out of their water. I was afraid that one day they would learn how to push the lid off of the tank and we’d return home to a gruesome sight on the living room floor.

Sparkles and Bows each grew to be 8 inches long. They were mammoth for gold fish; they looked big enough to cook for dinner. Then, after six long years, one morning as I was arriving at work, the phone rang. It was my husband with the news that Sparkles had died in his sleep. Our beloved gargantuan goldfish was gone. But that was not all… when you have a goldfish that big, you cannot just flush it down the toilet, as we have now learned. The toilet didn’t just clog, it began to spray water out of the back until we had a flood in the bathroom. It took my husband two days of trying to snake the toilet to get it to flush.

Bows lived just one more week after Sparkles, just long enough to meet the two new goldfish my younger daughter won at the fair on Friday. My husband sighs thinking about the salt-water tank that he will never have. Oh yes, and Bows is buried in the vegetable garden, not in the toilet.