More Siblings

January 29, 2019

Dear diary,

It’s been a while. I can’t write. Because there is too much pain. All the different pains compete with each other. To be heard. So I can’t choose. And so I don’t write. But mommy says that sometimes it helps to just document what you are seeing. As a process of witnessing. So I am going to try writing today.

I have more siblings. Mom got more axolotl eggs. From the internet. She ordered ten, received 13, and 11 of them hatched. ELEVEN more siblings. I guess winter is for baking and hatching eggs. That’s how I ended up with my first set of axolotl siblings.

I am also an uncle now. A few of my siblings had kids. They were all accidental. There were two sets of accidental eggs.

The first accidental set of eggs: two of my siblings were in the same tank and even though they were barely “of age” and even thought they are SIBLINGS—like sister and brother—there was some ovulation and sperm cones involved and we ended up with eggs. Incest. Ew.

Another sibling of mine, which I will call Goldie Locks, even though Goldie is a boy, was adopted into a new home and went to be roommates with a boy axolotl named Prof. Quagsire. It turns out Prof. Quagsire is a girl. Within minutes of meeting each other they started the mating dance. I saw the video. It involves Goldie rubbing his balls on Quagsire’s forehead. It was weird and funny at the same time. Balls. Forehead. Two things you don’t think of together very often. And twenty four hours later, there were eggs.

So now mom is carrying for three sets of eggs. The bought ones. And the two sets of accidental ones.

She keeps them in small glass containers with sticky notes on them: Mosaic and Lucy’s eggs. Kimbap’s eggs. Goldie and Quagsire’s eggs. Mom is also breeding daphina—aka water fleas as food for the baby axolotls. And to feed the daphnia so that they are healthy and reproduce into the bajillions, mom also had to buy spirulina to feed to the daphnia. The circle of life. Mom had to reassure dad that these fleas wouldn’t jump out of the water to bite us for blood. Ew. The house smells funny. Ew.

I’m so glad that I don’t have to take care of all these creatures. It’s just too many. I don’t know why mom does it. She calls them healthy distractions. With mom’s tendency to dive deeply into things, I wonder and worry if this is another form of numbing. To look away from your real life. So that you can be detached and worry about something else for a while. I guess that would be a relief, a pause of sorts rather than numbing. Okay. I feel better now. I’m going to give mommy a hug today.

Love, Bob