Once upon a time, my family lived in Gulfport, a small city adjacent to the town of St. Petersburg, Florida. Gulfport is all of 3.88 square miles and has a perfect, quaint downtown area filled with little boutiques, amazing restaurants, and prides itself for being pet-friendly, gay-pride friendly, quirky, and sells t-shirts and décor with the town motto: Keep Gulfport weird.
The small, fairly unpopulated beach area was the perfect place to bring a towel, some beach toys, and spend some time while my daughter could play happily in the sand and water or at the nearby playground. We would come home perfectly sun kissed after an hour or two and just in time for lunch and a little mid-day siesta.
Unfortunately, finding trash and litter is the sad “norm” at any beach area nowadays and I would always bring a bag to collect garbage along the way. As my toddler and I were taking our stroll along the shoreline, I looked on at her and beamed with pride thinking, ‘Yes, she will be a future humanitarian who will help save the world.’ As she wandered ahead of me, my mind had wandered off gazing into the ocean thinking about the little person I was raising.
Some days motherhood was euphoric, and you wish you could capture these precious moments in time and stay there forever…
“Mommy, look what I found!” I heard her call with her back still turned to me.
I remember so vividly – her adorable little brown Shirley Temple curls. And as she turned, her big beautiful bright eyes. And almost as if she were moving in slow motion, there it was. Held ever so proudly in her tiny cherub hands was a…
Dead.
Half-eaten.
Rotting.
Scaley.
Picked apart.
Did I mention, rotting?
Nasty.
Buggy-eyed.
Big.
Fish.
I dropped everything. The euphoric moment forever gone and now overcome by a whole bunch of WTH IS HAPPENING?!?
I only remember sprinting toward her screaming and shouting in motherly horror, “PUT THAT DOWN!!! PUT THAT DOWN, NOOOOOOWWWW!!!”
I frightened her with my insane, hysteric rush, and she dropped the lifeless carcass, though it already seemed as if she had held onto it for an eternity.
I scooped her up and rushed her to the ocean where I profusely began washing any decaying germs off into the very ocean the fish had once called home before he surmised to his terribly tragic death.
Did anyone just witness this?? I thought as I looked around horrified…Because surely if they had, they were either on the phone with DCF or rolling on the ground laughing as my public parenting folly unfolded in front of them.
The beautiful trip to the beach was cut short as I hauled my toddler off to the car where I again washed her from head to toe in antibacterial wipes and sped home. Metaphorically I tried to wipe my memory of the horror of that moment, no matter how well-intentioned I was at the time.
But, true to the motto, we definitely kept Gulfport weird that day!
So on this Earth Day, and every day, remember to pick up after yourself and others and make the world a better place! Even if it is with little funny parenting stories.
And also, beware of dead, rotting fish.
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Have a parenting folly you want to share? Drop me a line at info@lifewithjessandfriends.com.