A Yard With Fruit Trees, a Family of Hawks, and a Goldfish Pond

When we were freshmen in high school, our literature teacher asked us to write a story describing an incident in which we had done something we later regretted. I wrote about how I killed one of the goldfish in our backyard pond by holding it out of the water for too long. That's right: Even as a child, I was a terrible person.

The pond now has a completely new group of goldfish swimming in it. The peach trees are gone, but we still have our navel orange trees. The pump is as fake as always, but now we at least have wooden boards to protect the goldfish from preying birds (like our very own hawk family) and evil children like me.

See you later, little pond. I'm off to a new city to try my hand at doing what I've received six years' worth of training to do. I may be back earlier than I expect, but when I do, it'll be to create another yard somewhere new, full of dreams and fruits and birds and love. Maybe by then the baby hawks would be all grown up too.