What Blueberry Taught Me

Keeping a Fish Alive Nearly Kills Me

My best friend went on vacation for a week, and I offered to take in her mail.

“That reminds me,” she said. “Can you also take care of my fish?”

“Sure,” I told her. I mean, how hard could it be to take care of a fish?

“Great. All you have to do is feed Blueberry once a day. That’s it. The important thing is not to overfeed him. That’s how the fish we got before Blueberry died.”

“Okay,” I said.

But don’t forget to feed him, either. I mean, he’s just a fish, and it’s easy to forget.”

“I would never forget to feed him,” I said, suddenly becoming very anxious that I would forget to feed him. Such a thin line, between life and death!

The day my friend left, she walked Blueberry over in his bowl covered with Saran Wrap. “You just give him three shakes of fish food, no more. Afterwards, I like to tap on the glass to let him know it’s time to eat.” She tapped on his bowl and sure enough, Blueberry swam up to suck in his meal of insect larvae.

Over the course of that first day I performed approximately 140 wellness checks on Blueberry, who was fine. He was either swimming or resting, but he never for one second stopped being alive.

That night I slept fitfully, worried that I might forget to feed Blueberry, despite the numerous Post-it notes I’d left for myself all over the house What if I accidentally put in four shakes instead of three? What if he had died of natural causes in the night?

Morning dawned, and Blueberry lived. I fed him, shake, shake, shake. I tapped on the glass. Over the week, I fed, tapped, and obsessively checked to make sure he was still circling his mortal fishbowl coil. It was, frankly, exhausting.

My friend came to pick him up. She thanked me for taking care of him. No big deal, I lied, and from an effort standpoint, it wasn’t, but then, it was, in the same way flying wears me out; all that sustained hypervigilance, willing the plane to stay aloft! Ground insect larvae aside, I felt Blueberry’s life depended on maintaining my stratospheric level of anxiety that he not die.

Before my friend wrapped up Blueberry and walked him out the door, I tapped on the glass and said I would visit him, but I was only being polite. It’s not like I had anything against him, personally, but our relationship had run its course, and my job was done. Happily, I handed Blueberry off to die on someone else’s watch.