The Search

“What are you looking for?”

“Oh, I lost my goggles…” Melvin dives again under the lane lines, skimming close to the bottom of the pool, before popping up again. He tosses a pair of pink rimmed goggles on the deck.

I’m standing on the deck, dripping and ready to exit the natatorium.  Super Swimmer man in the lime green cap and turquoise swim trunks stands next to me. I’ve swam with him in my lane a few times. He’s okay to swim with except that he’s BIG. Tall, maybe over 6 feet, and muscular. His great white core barreling through the water.

Now he just stands and watches Melvin.

Nodding toward the discarded goggles, I ask, “Are those what you were looking for?”

“Not really,” Melvin shrugs before diving back under the water, swimming close the bottom of the pool again, heading out to the middle. He’s the Super Swimmer of the pool. Sleek and muscular, fast, and furious. A lifeguard and a manly man. If he can’t find what he’s looking for, who can? I muse.

I gather up my stuff and start down the cold hallway to the locker room. Lime Cap man shakes his head, then says to me: “Do we ever really find what we are looking for?”

He chuckles. Pleased with his joke. I stare at him, then shake my head. “Depends,” I say, but before I can elaborate, he’s gone, striding down the hallway, leaving big man wet footprints in his wake.

Later, at home now, dry and hungry, I muse about Lime Cap Man’s question. Do we ever really find what we are looking for?

I suppose first, you have to know what you’re looking for. If it’s a lost pair of goggles, then that’s rather straightforward. You either find them or you don’t. But what if it’s something more abstract?

Like the meaning of life?

Hell, I’m never gonna find that! Has anyone? Of course, it’s a question that people have been asking for eons: philosophers, artists, writers. Socrates. Thoreau. Rodin. It’s a search that is eternal. And unanswerable. At least as far as I can figure.

So, I’ll stick to more mundane searches.

Right now, I’m searching for ways to stay warm besides running the heat 24 hours a day, which frankly, I can’t afford.

So, I hunker under the electric blanket with the heating pad behind me. Grab the cat and place her strategically on my ice-cold feet. Sometimes she cooperates. Other times, she’s looking for something else.

Who the hell knows what that could be!

So far, finding warmth has eluded me. It’s just not possible. I think I ‘run’ cold anyway. I talk to people who tell me they are always hot. What would that be like? They never seem happy about it.

            And, I guess, just to end with the cliché. It’s this ‘happiness’ that we are all searching for, right? I do believe that I can find this. Though it is fleeting.

            In the pool. At the piano. Snuggling with the cat. Hanging out with Ian.

            The search, though, continues. I’m always looking for something.

            Will I find it?

            I hope not. Cuz without a quest for that elusive ‘something’ would we have any purpose at all?

            Something to ponder.

            I do wonder, though, if Melvin ever found his goggles. I’ll have to ask him next time I see him. That is, if I can remember. I'm still searching for my brain. 

    Always!