The first time I ever saw one was at
Ernest Hemingway’s house in Key West. Behind the open air mansion, under Palm
Trees and Tropical foliage, is a massive swimming pool built by his wife
Pauline. Rumor has it when the great
writer saw it he dug a penny out of his pocket and threw it at her saying,
“There you’ve taken my last penny.”
The coin is plastered into the pool
now and is part of the spills given to crowds of tourists.
It doesn’t matter if it’s true or
not.
It’s a great story!
And as I learned in Seminary,
“Never, ever let the truth stand in the way of a good story.”
The thing about Hemingway’s pool
though is it’s filled with salt water. Crystal clear, it looks just like the
chemically clean pools that I grew up using.
On Tybee Island I assumed that salt
ocean water was sometimes green but mostly brown. Not so in Key West or most of
the rest of the world.
When my friend Carlos visited Tybee
from his home in St. Martin, I took him to the beach and he exclaimed, “Mike!
Who shit in your ocean?”
I explained the marshes and the
influence of the mud. “It does color the water but it fills Tybee waters with
nutrients that ensure our fish and shrimp are well fed. It’s why our seafood
tastes so good.”
“That may be true,” he said in his
French Caribbean lilt, “but it still looks like somebody shit there.”
“Well, I’ll take Tybee shrimp over
St. Martin lobster any day!”
I love salt water. It swims through
my veins. It sticks to my skin. It falls from my eyes when my heart fills or
breaks. It soothes my feet when they are sore. It seasons most every pot I put
on the stove. It brings me luck when I throw a pinch over my shoulder.
It was in sheer delight yesterday
when I cannon balled the girls in the pool on the ship we are on. It’s a salt
water pool.
The massive boat is a tiny dot in
the vast salty ocean we are sailing through. I see no land, not a single
island, only the majesty of the deep blue sea. I’m reminded that regardless of
what I accomplished, or failed to, the world is bigger than I am.
