Human Parts

Lauren Silverman weaves together issues surrounding relationships, immigration … and rainbow trout. It is a beautifully written, and highly personal, essay.

Here’s a fish that is born with multiple destinies. It can choose to stay in its native river forever, or swim hundreds of miles into the deep blue — and it makes this life-altering choice multiple times. In fact, steelhead sometimes make three or four round-trips in a lifetime. So, when Paulo called me from Argentina, many months after we’d separated, to say he had decided to return to California — to me — I couldn’t help smiling. I was thinking about us, but also about the journey of the steelhead trout.

“Motherhood had always been her path. In exchange for it, however, the woman before me had surrendered her keys to the world.”