Salmon

Whenever I visit my brother in White Plains, New York, I think of salmon. Their lives' journeys culminate in this dramatic moment of peril, in which they essentially return home.

My brother returned home after packing a lot of living into his undergraduate years at Hobart College in upstate New York. He had his travels with friends, across country and to Europe, on Eurail passes.

He had adventures I'll probably never even hear about. And then, like a salmon, he returned home. To spawn. He got married to his lovely bride and had a beautiful daughter Hannah, whom he named after our father, Hanno.

I wonder during these trips, as I see the beauty of the landscape, and feel the familiarity of the very air I breathe, if I am somehow destined to return to this area, too. Maybe not now, but someday?

As it is, I've been pretty well "priced-out" as a salmon in this particular river, and my spawning days are over. But who knows what the future holds?