Water is the Universal Solvent

What brought them together isn’t nearly so important as how far they traveled.
Although neither of them knew it at the time, they shared the same beginning. Commercially spawned, hatched, and raised, their only memories were narrow and long. Perhaps this is how they learned that the only way to experience life was  swimming forward.

On the day they were released with their countless fingerling siblings they learned there were no more boundaries. 

​He dreamed of swimming to Alaska.

​She yearned for whatever lay around the next bend. 

​He always swam in a straight line. With determination. With purpose. No deviations. No wasted energy.
​
​She swam everywhere.

 Sometimes in the deep, cool pools. ​

Sometimes through the treacherous shallows. ​

At least once a day she breached the water's surface.
Oh! how she loved those moments!
The grace of her body above the water..
​The glint of sunlight on her scales.

​When spawning season came, he said to her, “Come swim with me.”

So she did. ​

​After that first spawning. something shifted.
Not between them.
But within him.

“If even two of our fry turn out to be decent fingerlings, it will be a miracle,” he would say.
“I’ve laid three to five thousand eggs,” she would reply. “The odds are in our favor.”

When they came to their third spawning  he announced, “I’m tired."
​
Even though she wasn’t tired at all, she swam by his side.

​They spawned again.
And again.
Even though their scales lost some of their shine.
And their bodies carried the memory of every waterway.

​“Before we fall apart we should let the bears get us, " he liked to say, 
“Contemplating sushi-side again?” she would reply.
“Spawning is too much work,” he would say. “So much swimming.”

During those conversations she would allow the water carry her for a while because, she realized, the current felt gentler now. It no longer rushed around rocks the way it had when they were young. It simply found a way through. 

​One morning he stopped swimming.

She nudged him toward the shallows where the water was warmer and the sunlight reached the bottom.​

​“I want to stop,” he said.

​She rested beside him as dragonflies stitch blue threads through the air and he settled into the shadows beneath the water.
Finally he asked,
“Was it enough?”
​
She considered where  the water had  taken them.

The transitions they'd survived.

The seasons when the water ran low.

The ridiculous arguments over which way the current ought to be taken. Which tributary to follow. 
​​
​The years she’d spent swimming beside someone who could only imagine straight lines    

while she sought waterfalls,

and ​moonlight,

​

---

and what might be around the next bend.

​“Yes,” she said. “I had adventures, too.”
​
When the bear finally came, she slipped quietly into deeper water.
Not to save herself.
Only to give him the dignity of choosing his own ending.

The river carried what remained downstream.
As rivers always do.

​Days later, she found herself swimming alone for the first time in many seasons.
It was strange.
She still drifted toward the sunny places.
Still breached the surface now and then.
Still marveled that the light could scatter itself into a thousand pieces across the water.
She had once believed love meant swimming side by side forever.
Now she understood.
Love was about  water traveled  together.
That which dissolves almost everything
leaving gratitude behind.

For my parents