I know the human being and the fish can coexist peacefully

Mary kissed her mother and boarded the ship for the new world.  It was spring, the perfect time to begin anew.  She reached to steady the trunk her mother had carefully packed with dishes, linens and the blue glasses she had once unpacked herself... just as her mother reached for her daughter's picture in the hours to come.   Her dashing husband was already in America  building a life they both would share with their children, but she didn't know it yet, didn't know that they would live out their lives in the beautiful house on the elm-lined street with a vegetable garden, fruit trees, flowers of every kind, and dahlias...their favorite,  which she would place on their only daughter's grave...their daughter whose short life brought them more joy and sorrow then they could bear,  although they adored the three sons who  lived to see the next century and all it brought.

Andrew, the oldest, kissed his mother and moved his few possessions to Chicago where he watched a beautiful woman and reached to steady her when she slipped, and Andrew and Zelma could not stop reaching for one another in that city of promise and noise and tall buildings so far from Zelma's home among the magnolias and genteel people and Andrew's home among the steel mills and immigrants .  A son was born, a war was won, a daughter made the dream complete.   A new home, new job, new car,  as bad times turned into affluent times for most,  although the work was hard... a labor of love.

Their children thrived and learned to reach for their own dreams in a different place, in a different time, with their children, as the memories swam together with the memories of all those before.