#14 Gratefulness

I'm grateful for my little friend Sapphire. She's a betta fish and I've adopted her a-little over a year ago. Sapphire is the second beta fish I have had. After having other fish over the years - it started out as a kid we had fish then for awhile - then we didn't. Then in about 2015 maybe (?) I got a goldfish from my dad and it started again - my love for aquariums! I've found that beta fish are easier. They require smaller tanks - Sapphire is in a 10 gallon - and less water changes as other fish. She has her filter, heater and thermometer. Her breed is a crown tail and she's blue and black - thus is why I named her Sapphire.
I love just watching her and seeing her swim around. She'll usually stay in the same spot and watch me and I'll stay still and watch her. I sometimes sing to her. I thought they could hear but after doing some research online I'm pretty sure they can't hear... but I still sing to her from time to time. Just silly little stuff. Her tank is on top of my fantasy and sci fi bookshelf in my living room. She has brought simple but beautiful joy to my quite life. <3

#14 Things you may not know about me

My father is a veteran. He severed in Vietnam. I figured this would be a good one to write about since it is Memorial day. Growing up we didn't talk much about it. We knew as kids (my sister and I) it was something he did. But topics like that and other wars weren't discussed much. It was just a hard topic to talk about with two young girls growing up. He was a veteran service officer for quite awhile. That was a job where he helped other veterans with their doctor apportionment, mental health related care, driving them to apportionments, applying for benefits and I'm sure there was other things I just can't think of them off the top of my head. It was a good job, one he was able to retire from comfortably at an early age.
Recently he has talked to me more about his experiences more. This past winter we actually had some good conversations - things he told me that he has told hardly anyone else. About some of the stuff that went down and what he had to do, how he dealt with it over there. It was basically kids over there fighting a war that they had nothing to do with. To be taken to a strange and unknown place, face danger and death almost daily. To survive and come back to their home and have slurs used against them, trash thrown at them and be hatted for something they had no control over. What a warm welcome indeed.
I could talk more about this, but I feel I want to keep what I know about my dad and his experiences private. I respect him to no ends and now I am here as his daughter as someone to listen to him in his aging years of a time that changed him in a way that no one should ever have to go through.