Th3 Simple Questions

MY SOUL IS A SOCKEYE SALMON

WHO AM I?

I am an old guy swimming laps in the Community Therapy Pool, dodging the geriatrics with bathing caps in aqua-walkers and swimmees, avoiding the autistic teen in the Hawaiian-print suit who is screaming and leaping with delight. Three middle-aged regulars swim laps to emerge feeling younger and fitter. I admit my 45 minutes of laps seem to last a lifetime. I congratulate the bariatric woman for showing up.

My soul is a sockeye salmon and in its birth pool high above the Washington coast with its spawn-mates it leaps with youthful joy in the sweet water and circles and circles and then plunges downstream. It races over falls and leaps over obstacles until it reaches the salt water. My salmon soul adapts to the rigors of a huge cosmopolitan ocean-going social neighborhood. The toxic saline environment, which only a short time before would have killed it, now miraculously transforms it.

WHAT DO I WANT?

For many years I worked for a major corporation. Surviving there meant going with the flow, but you had to be able to change. You had to know how to handle the high and low tides of the marketplace. Timing was everything. A corporate rip tide downsizing can kill you. A competitive storm can slam you into rocks and cut you up. Avoid the sharks. I knew them but never trusted them. My salmon soul is more than middle-aged and weighs maybe 50 pounds. Its school has been living in the open sea for seven or eight years now, avoiding the sharks and seals. It navigates in the ocean by orienting itself with sunrise, sunset and major constellations of the northern hemisphere. It knows its age by seasons and by counting full moons.

I retired a few years ago. A 90-year-old woman and I have lapped one another for years now. She used to swim across open water following a row boat. I traveled in my car and made sales. Last night as my wife and I crossed the street to Sal’s for pizza and wine I looked up and saw the belt of the constellation Orion. I remember how those stars still guide sailors. A vague fear arose that my salmon soul would someday soon feel compelled to return to its birth pool.

WHY AM I HERE?

My salmon soul cruises dangerously close to shore and near more predators like hawks, bears and men to test the mouths of creeks, searching for the route to the birth pool, listening to the sound of each river. It comes to one which makes the harmonics that sound familiar, like home. It turns in but finds fresh water. My salmon soul swims harder, urgently wishing to reach the warm pool of its life’s end. It reaches the shallows and fertilizes eggs of a spectacularly beautiful dying female. My salmon soul feels the agony of the sweet water of death. But another soul will be born.

I stand in the shallows of the Community Therapy Pool. Around me are the dying, the geriatrics in their swimmees, the bariatric woman and me. We swim lap after lap on our way to where? To no cosmic purpose whatsoever? I find no comfort. How does a man find his way home, to his pool of death, let alone get there? I weep salty tears easily. I pull down my swim goggles and gasp for breath, as I can hardly can believe this is happening to me.