Donna Berzatto has been anything but a reliable mother to her three children. But when her only daughter Natalie, nicknamed “Sugar,” is about to give birth, the soon-to-be grandmother becomes an unexpected pillar of support.
With everyone else having turned off their phone during the family restaurant’s busy service hours, Donna and Nat end up at the hospital alone, and it makes for one heck of an episode of The Bear. Donna, brilliantly played by Jamie Lee Curtis, brings her daughter ice chips, shows her breathing exercises, and tells her stories to calm her down.
When Nat wants to know about the day of her own birth, Donna launches into “the fish tank dream.” She wasn’t due for a few days, Donna explains. One night, home alone, she climbed into bed at 8 PM and fell into a deep sleep. “And I had this…this really vivid dream, but—you know those kind of dreams where you’re just doing normal stuff, but things are, like, super detailed?” Sugar nods, and Donna continues.
She must have had the day off, Donna says, because in this “nothing-dream,” she was walking around the city. Not exactly her city—the city of Chicago—but some sort of hybrid between Chicago and New York. “And…and there was a fish tank.” “A fish tank?” “A big fish tank in the middle of the city. It was this giant fish tank, and I was the only one looking at it,” Donna says.
So there she was, standing in an all-grey city, all alone, looking at “a mega, like a dentist office kind of fish tank.” “And I remember the colors were…they were so sharp and vivid and neon, and I was the only one looking at it. It was beautiful.” But then, after “staring at it for the longest time,” something happened.
“And all of a sudden, I noticed that the glass started to come apart like it was gonna split,” Donna continues. “But I wasn’t worried, you know?” Somehow, even in her dream, she realized: “It wasn’t bad, because I knew that more people were gonna get to see these beautiful fish.” “And then?” “Then I woke up, and I was sweating, and my water had broke.”
Sometimes, we stare at a beautiful fish tank, and we don’t want the dream to end. Our son is acing his tests. We have the perfect week at the office. A stock just keeps going up. But sooner or later, the glass always cracks. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing, you know?
When you see the glass starting to come apart, don’t worry. Don’t think about the loss, or the shards, or the mess you’ll have to clean up later. Some short-term pain might follow, but that’s not the important part. Focus on what the break might set free for everyone, including you. Remember that more people will get to see these beautiful fish.
In order to discover the sea, we first must leave our aquarium. That’s why it’s okay if the glass breaks. As long as you keep swimming, it just might be good news.