This morning, walking into the preschool, I was greeted by an interesting sight. One of the teachers walked toward the front door with a sandwich baggie held far out in front of her, pinched between her gloved index finger and thumb in the universal sign of "I'm carrying something gross."
"What's that?" I asked, noticing what looked like a paper towel crumpled up in the bag.
"Our class fish died."
Now, first off, I appreciate her taking the time to obscure the view of the dead fish by first wrapping it in a paper towel. Seeing a dead body at a preschool age can become a core memory that sticks with you - just ask me about my first pet, a rabbit named Conejo.
I imagine one of the little kids seeing the fish floating upside down in the class tank, pointing to it and asking why "the fishie is sleeping?"
The fish was probably named Gil, or some other pun-name that class mascots always seem to have.
Tomorrow morning I will pour a little latte out for the parents who had to deal with a thousand questions from their kids about why the fish died, what happens when something dies, will you die, will I die, do rocks die, and on and on.
My son asked me if the fish drowned - good thought, Buddy, though unlikely.
Anyway, I looked over at the teacher holding the Ziploc baggie as if it contained a radioactive nugget and asked if I could take it. She looked at me wryly and then smiled, probably relieved from having to take it outside herself, and asked, "what will you do with it?"
"Feed the plants," I shrugged while using my ungloved hand to take the baggie. As she already knew I was the weird Mom, she handed the fish right over.
After getting home, I took Gil out of his clear plastic coffin and plunked him into a little hole in the soil I drilled with my finger under one of the tomato plants. Replacing the dirt on top of "Gil" I thought about the tomatoes that will start to emerge in just a few months, fed by his noble sacrifice.
I doubt many people see a teacher carrying a dead fish through a preschool and think, "I can use that!" Rather than recoiling at it as I once would have, my instinct now is, "Oh! That's fertilizer."
Since moving to a small urban farm, my perspective on the usefulness of things is so drastically different than it once was. The plastic clamshells that once housed berries or cherry tomatoes are squirreled away in a pile in the corner like an episode of Hoarders. They're the perfect little individual greenhouses to start seeds. Baling twine is used for everything from gate latches to goat leashes. Bits of wire, leftover wood, and even old mixing bowls (aka animal food bowls) get added to the growing collection of "the useful things."
In my old life, things felt more disposable than they do today. Maybe it's because when you're outside trying to fix whatever things have gone wrong (and something is always wrong), you have to get creative and use whatever is on hand. Or maybe it's because every aspect of an operation can quickly start to hemorrhage money. It's better to use what's already at our disposal than to buy new.
A dead preschool mascot even can be useful. Goodbye, "Gil" the fish - so long, and thanks for all the tomatoes.