Mississippi river fish gliding in front of me, I discovered tears streaming down my cheeks. I stepped forward and rested my palm on the cool, thick plexiglass between us. Three or more feet long, drab brown fish drifted along in front of me, and I felt peace and sorrow together.
Allowing myself to be in the emotion that I still don’t quite understand, I lowered myself to the carpeted ledge meant for little feet. As the fish continued their rounds of the aquarium, I began to see them more clearly.
Their scales glimmered, iridescent behind the brown. Tails and fins swept back and forth with powerful grace. One particular beauty glided by, covered in scales the shape of elongated diamonds, each one perfectly shaped and precisely aligned.
I suspect that part of my emotion came from a childhood awed by ocean life. For years, my answer to, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” was “marine biologist.” In grade school, I even wrote two books for the Young Authors’ program about a young manatee named Paddletail and his human advocates, twins named Violet and Vicky.
Earlier this week, though, it felt special, too, to enter an aquarium in the oft-maligned Midwest, and be immediately greeted by the beings who swim along the northern and eastern borders of St. Louis, my home city. We host wonder below our waters, too.
Above all, perhaps, I felt deep relief entering a space that I knew was mine to explore. I arrived at the St. Louis Aquarium only a few minutes after they opened that morning, with only one other visitor sharing the train to the exhibits. I had no other responsibilities that day (besides to remember to eat), until I was due to pick up my kiddo in the afternoon. I was free to be blind to time, free to choose my path, free to follow my interest.
Three hours I spent there, wandering from display to display, occasionally chatting with staff as I did. “Doctor fish” exfoliated my hands, swarming and piling on top of each other to greet me. Piranhas stunned me with their beauty—red glittering from the scales around their face—and I learned that they aren’t hunters, but scavengers. Now I think of them as the turkey vultures of the water.
Absurdly, I found myself identifying with Moon Jellies' ephyra stage as they swam, tiny, in their U-shaped Kreisel aquarium. As small as a pinhead, they pulsed their eight arms, one, two, three, four times, propelling themselves through the water, and then they would let themselves go slack, floating freely in the circular flow of the tank. To keep moving, they—and I—must rest.
In Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith’s TEDxAtlanta talk, she shares seven categories of rest: mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, creative, and sensory. When I first saw that list—admittedly on someone's Instagram diagram, not from Dr. Dalton-Smith directly—it immediately resonated with me, and helped me realize that I had been putting way too much of myself into what I thought of as physical rest.
Contemplating my aquarium visit as I write this, I think those few hours might have inadvertently touched on all seven types that Dalton-Smith describes.
As I became enchanted by the water animals, my intrusive thoughts stopped intruding; my body moved with ease; and my emotions spilled out of me. My bilaterally symmetrical human self felt connection with invertebrates of rotational symmetry. I was brave enough to get out my sketchbook, and immersed myself in observing pencil-thin spotted garden eels and elegantly patterned Banggai cardinal fish. And the touch pools, wow, the touch pools brought my skin such cool tenderness with their silky smooth rays and limpets.
An aquarium might not be a place of rest for you. Maybe it's an afternoon in the woods, or a destination-free stroll through city streets, or swim or paddle in your local human-welcoming water. Whatever it is, I hope you get yourself there soon. We and the ephyra need our rest as much as our movement.
Mentioned in this issue: The St. Louis Aquarium; Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith's TEDxAtlanta talk; and here’s an article that concisely lists her seven types of rest.