When a giant Pacific octopus mother lays her eggs, around fifty thousand, she guards them with her life; that is to say, she lives only for the sake of her children. The octopus tends to the cave she built around her kin, blowing water over her eggs braided together like a bead curtain. Each egg, a pale teardrop, grows only because of their mother’s sacrifice. For half a year the octopus feasts on nothing; she cannot risk leaving her babies to search for food. Within weeks the octopus’s eyes sink into her skull, forming dark craters. Later, she tears off her skin and sucks on her own tentacles to slow the starvation process. Her scarlet skin dilutes to a dull gray. When I was born, my mother began to starve. Every meal went right through her. As a child, I once touched my mother’s bruises, the color of rotting eggplant, staining her thigh. She sunk her nails into my wrist when she grabbed my arm. I sobbed while she rubbed my back and softly sang “Let All Things Now Living,” her apology. My mother spent days in her dim bedroom. I’d bring her a bowl of dad’s venison soup and a glass of ice water. She never touched the soup. I’d witnessed my mother drag her fingers through her scalp and pluck out clumps of her scarlet hair, wad it into Kleenex and throw it into the trash. I saved a few strands and taped them inside my journal. When I was twelve and began menstruating, my mother cried and cried at the kitchen table, while I sat still with half a roll of toilet paper stuffed into my underwear. After months of agonizing devotion, the octopus spends her last breaths blowing her babies into the open water, knowing only two will survive to reproduction age. Two are all the species needs to continue. At seventeen, after my high school graduation, my mother took me to the lake and we floated in the water in all our clothes: me in my cap and gown, her in her lemon-yellow church dress. She called out to me, floating closer to the middle of the lake, her pink toes stuck out of the water like tiny buoys. Once the mother octopus blows her children out far enough to live on their own, she succumbs to the sea.

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