Being Seattle - The Goodbye Girl

Jason got a fantastic job opportunity in Boston, so we’re leaving Washington for a few years to try it out.

It’s a huge change. Neither of us have lived anywhere but Washington. It means I have to give up my first museum job. We have to leave our Spokane friends and family all over again, and this time also leave our Seattle people. The logistics of getting two adults and two fussy pets 3,000 miles is tricky, not to mention all our things. I like the idea of a big shake-up, but I’m worried, too.

Finding an apartment from across the continent is even more difficult than we imagined. Boston uses brokers, which means you find an apartment you like, and then pay an agent one-month’s rent to get you the application and submit it for you. I’m sure many of them do more than that for clients, but it seems to us we’re just throwing away several thousand dollars since we are doing all the leg work ourselves. The first place that responds to us and has a unit to rent can’t provide us photos or a floorplan, but they’re happy to take our money. The second place we finally get a response from keeps moving the goal post, even after I’ve sent them money to secure a unit. Their emails are a mess, never responding to the correct chain, and often talking about a third floor unit when we keep correcting them saying we only want a ground floor unit. An availability of April 24 gets moved back to May 1, and then June 1. On the day we are going to sign a lease for June 1, they email again and say the unit will be undergoing maintenance and so not available until maybe the middle of June, but they’ll let us know before June. We have to make some noise to get our deposit back, but eventually do.

Jason’s job can’t wait for him any longer, and he flies to Boston without me to start working. We’re fortunate in that he’s friends with his coworker, so he stays in their apartment. We have to be out of our Seattle apartment by May 1, so I move in with my mom-in-law, Judy, until we can find a home in Boston. I take the pets, a few clothes, and some art supplies to Judy’s. The rest of our pared-down furniture and things fills a small storage unit.

Jason and our puppy neighbor, Mel

Bailey in the jungle

I spend the last days of April packing and cleaning. I’m cranky about cleaning the apartment by myself, and then frustrated at myself for being aggravated. It’s harder to be alone in a new city away from your family and friends, working 12 hour days, and adjusting to culture shock than it is to scrub a toilet. I feel petty for being upset. I go through the rooms, touching the walls and thanking our apartment for four good years as our home. We had some very difficult times there, and some very beautiful ones, too. It was our only home in Seattle, and it saw us through three graduations, five wedding anniversaries, two masters degrees, several jobs, some desperate depressions, a few snowfalls, and dozens of delightful times with friends.

I don’t know when I’ll get to join Jason in Boston, so I spend as much time as I can seeing people in Seattle. Lunch with Kaitlyn. Photos and dinner with Sarah and Amy. More photos with Rachel and Katherine. Each time I see someone, I say “No, no, it won’t be the last time we hang out before I leave” but I’m never entirely positive that’s the case. I meet Christina and her baby, Sebastian, at Alki Beach. Jason and I always loved the groovy, beach-town vibe of West Seattle, and I have good memories of Alki. We visit the Loghouse Museum, a small community museum in a preserved log house. They have a world map where visitors can place a mark to show where they’re from, and I’m delighted that people from all over the world have visited. Maybe if the world is that connected, Boston won’t seem so far. Christina is so logical and scientific, funny in a dry and blunt way. We talk about relationships, motherhood, careers. I hide a small reliquary near the beach for a stranger to find, and it’s later found instead by a friend.

Liz visits from Spokane, and brings her beautiful little family with her. We visit the zoo and the aquarium, snatching little starlings of conversation between playing with Liz and Matt’s young daughter, Lydia. Lydia gravitates toward make-believe wherever we go. The zoo has a little African house, and she mimes a bedtime ritual over and over again instead of looking at the zebras. The aquarium has diving suits and flippers, and she and I spend very involved minutes being fish and mermaids and divers, bringing food back to our home. The real diver and sea creatures are much less interesting to her, and she talks instead about what color fish I am.

A diver feeds fish at the Seattle Aquarium

Lydia's attention makes my heart sing

We feed French fries to seagulls at Ivars on the Pier 

When Liz and I do get to talk, it seems familiar: relationships, motherhood, careers. The big pillars of our lives. I’ve known Liz for 21 years this autumn, but she always has something new and interesting to say to me. We recently started a podcast called Ouija Broads, where we talk about weird things in our neck of the woods. I like hearing the history, but my favorite stories she tells are the personal ones. She recently moved back to Spokane from the east coast, and I feel particularly deflated that she’s come back to Washington just as I’m leaving it.

Selina visits from Spokane as well. She's a constant, and being a military kid knows how to maintain a long-distance friendship. We talk about art and moving, about relationships both romantic and platonic. She's such a feminine powerhouse, such a moving example of how to be a strong, tough, and also delicate woman. 

Kate teaches me how to dye fabric with natural dyes, like indigo, cochineal, and sandalwood. She’s a witch, stirring a bubbling cauldron of colors. We talk about art, process and progress. And about people, oh yes: about people. We talk about the trips we’ve taken, and where we’ll visit next. Something I really like about Kate is that she does the things she says she will. She experiments and tries and follows through. She has her own small business, selling her dyed textiles. I like that bravery. We go on a beach walk with Sarah and her sweet dog Red, and I can't stop smiling at how happy Red is to be disgusting and dirty, rolling in dead flotsam. I photograph Sarah's exhibit at a local gallery, and I'm so moved by her passion and voice. 

With Kate at Montana Bar

My tattoo, Kate's dyed fabric

Red, about to get really gross

I visit Spokane and see family and friends, but it’s not enough time to say and do everything. I almost never feel I put in enough quality time with my mom and dad and brother and sister-in-law and stepson when I’m in Spokane, and it’s just amplified knowing I won’t see them for months after this trip. I try to spend meaningful time with Judy in Bothell, but I feel like I come up short on that, too. I’m shortchanging the people I love most, because they’re the ones who don’t make a fuss even if the dollars don’t add up. I already miss my family so deep I can’t think about it or my eyes well and my throat tightens. My brother grounds me and inspires me in equal measure; my dad shows me there’s no other way to be except tall and strong; my mom is the woman I want to be, so loving and funny and brave. How can I leave them? I break down in tears every time I remember how much physical distance the move puts between us.   

On the drive to Spokane

Daddy, with Gus the dog

I spend time with my Maggie, my first friend in Seattle. She’s my hedgewitch: she knows more about Washington’s plants than anyone else I know. We take walks, and she points out flowers and leaves, telling me their names and any interesting facts she knows about them. Trillium is her lucky flower, gorse is the yellow-flowered bush I see everywhere, and she points out salmonberries and thimbleberries. She takes me to a hidden little meadow full of periwinkle, and we talk while sitting on a log floating in Lake Washington. She listens to me talk about people she doesn’t even know, and with such gentleness and attention.  

Mystery flower and seed pods, which of course Maggie figured out is
a Paulownia tomentosa 

Trillium, Maggie's lucky flower

Becca joins me a few times in Bothell. We look at antique shops, and walk on a floating boardwalk through a wetland preserve. We leave an offering at the Princess of Pike Place's grave.We try on blue lipstick at the mall, I’m too shy to ask for a makeup sample to take home. But Becca has no problem asking for me. She tells me how she probably would not have asked for herself either, but doesn’t have any hesitation asking things for others. I’m grateful for allies like Becca, in things small and large. We talk about ourselves and about other people. We talk about the weird gap that opened between us when she moved back to Seattle after a summer away, and how we’re glad we closed it with time and talking. And we talk about the people we’ve recently felt disconnected from, and whether we can fill in the holes for the friendships to be whole again.        

On the boardwalk with Becca

Adding our offerings

I quarrel with a new but dear friend, and of course it’s about our relationship. About expectations and what can and can’t be given. About wants. About fulfillment. I think we’re talking through things when suddenly he stops talking to me entirely. The rejection hurts deeply, it feels like I’m not worth the hard parts of a friendship. And it hurts that maybe there’s something I can’t fix, that all my acceptance and patience and love aren’t enough.

I quarrel with an old and foundational friend about our relationship, too. About perceptions and words and old hurts and new ones, too. About how “being there” maybe isn’t enough when the other person doesn’t feel your presence. About emotions she can’t express and anger I never healed. This fight shakes me even more, because if someone I’ve known for this long can’t share authentic feelings with me, then how can I expect anyone to?

And I quarrel with a family member. With a woman I care deeply for, but who I haven’t shown that to, enough. This hurts the most of all, because I feel fully in the wrong for this fight, and all my apologies feel too late. It’s a reminder to answer texts even when I’m tired. It’s a reminder to make time for my family above all, even though they’re the first ones to say “If you don’t have time for me, it’s okay, I understand.” It’s a reminder to slow down enough to show my genuine love and appreciation for her presence in my life, and my heart breaks to think maybe I’ve gotten these reminders too late to fix our bond.

Relationships and people. I’ve long been bothered by the (supposed) Eleonore Roosevelt quote, “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” I almost exclusively talk about people, it seems. Ideas and events are fantastic, but they don’t hold my interest or focus the way people do. I learn theory best through case studies. I retain history best through personal accounts. I have a hunger and a passion for people. And, honestly, that hunger has turned into a sickening gnaw lately. I love people so much, but I’m so exhausted by them, too. I feel tired and spread thin and diminished, and I blame it on spending too much time on people and not enough time on myself.

Which is actually bullshit. It’s a lazy way of placing blame. If I’m exhausted by people, it’s probably because I’m spending too much energy on non-restorative people. Or things. Or my own thought spiral, an oroborus of anxiety. My roots, and my truth, is that I love people, and I love spending time with people. I need my time alone, too: to draw, to quilt, to edit photos. But those hold no joy for me if I don’t have a person to give that quilt to, to talk art technique with, to share my photography with. I’ve been holding those separate in my mind too long, forgetting they don’t exist in a vacuum, and they’re not competing priorities.   

Small minded. I don’t like that quote because I don’t like thinking I’m small minded. I don’t like thinking I’m less intelligent for not wanting to talk on a cosmic scale. But the longer I sit with it, I think that’s just ego, baby. That’s just feeling badly someone else’s priorities (and quotable quips) don’t match up with your own, and worrying they’re right and you’re wrong. I want to talk about people. So I will. I’ll talk about people because maybe that’s how I bridge those distances. How I keep them with me every day, even though we are 3,000 miles and a lot of time zones apart. Small minded, but big hearted. That’s pretty self-congratulatory, but my ego doesn’t mind.

Jason finds us the most beautiful apartment in Boston. It’s in an old building, on the fifth floor, and full of natural light. It’s been remodeled, but has kept the original charm of beamed ceilings, wainscoting, ornate door mantles. The cost is staggering, even to my Seattle-attuned price-gauge. But Jason is adamant he wants to get me, get us a good home that we look forward to being in. He makes plans to drive our UHaul from Seattle to Boston with his coworker, working in shifts so they can make it in 3 days. I think to myself that maybe I don’t deserve this man as my partner, that I don’t deserve the friends and family that I have. I am surrounded by the most beautiful, brave, strong, smart, vulnerable people. I don't deserve this grace. 

But I’ll gladly spend the rest of my life trying to be worthy.

Bailey, in the UHaul and ready to hit the road

At Lake View Cemetery

      

Sink or Swim, thoughts on triathalons and the state of the union

I’m not always great with follow through. I have great intentions, but then they get overwhelmed by all the other things that could and should be done. Right now my best intentions are probably hiding behind a pile of dirty laundry. And a pile of clean laundry I just need to fold. And some important but boring-looking mail I haven’t opened. Buried under a whole heck of a lot of guilt. I want to be a better person, but stuff keeps getting in the way.

Do some laundry. 

One of the only ways for me to get my actions to meet my intentions is to just go, to not think and to not stop. The moment I decide I want to do a good thing I have to start doing that good thing. Like Dory, I have to just keep swimming. Sometimes that means literally keep swimming, like the time I signed up to be the swimmer for a sprint-triathlon team. Cindy, Erin and I signed up as a team to compete in the Wonder Woman Quarter-Tri (Selina and Liz signed up as individuals, maybe because they were more athletic but also probably because they are hella competitive). I can swim just fine. What I had no experience doing was swimming quickly, swimming with 50 other women starting in the same heat, or swimming in deep, open water. It’s okay though, those things don’t matter if you sign up before you think about how terrifying those things are.

Because those things are terrifying, or at least they are to me. Being timed is a lot of pressure on someone who a) isn’t athletic and b) doesn’t want to let down their athletic teammates. Being in a crowd isn’t scary, but being around a bunch of energy gel-fueled women who were basically punching their way through water makes me nervous. And swimming? I love swimming. What I don’t love is water that I can’t see the bottom of. Even in our cold little lakes in Washington, I’m serious in my belief that someone at some time may have released an alligator turtle, alligator gar or straight-up alligator into the water and it grew into a huge, cranky reptile that’s waiting for some idiot in a swim cap to blunder along so it can eat off her legs. Also, touching seaweed with your toes is gross.

Lake monsters are all over the US. 

This baby gonna get ate. 

I practiced swimming the half-mile distance in an indoor pool, only sometimes having to share my lane. Oh, and I stood at the edge of the lake while Liz and Selina practiced swimming in open water. So on race day, it’s safe to say I was not at all prepared to swim a half mile in open, cold, lake water, surrounded by the piranha-like frenzy of a bunch of swimmin’ women.

From the moment the horn sounded, all I could think was “I’m going to drown.” That’s not hyperbole: I honestly thought dying was a real possibility. The shock of the water was nothing compared to the shock of being accidentally hit and kicked dozens of times as swimmers moved around and over me. I couldn’t see through the bodies and choppy water well enough to swim in a line. I couldn’t breathe, from the water churned up into my face and from the shallow, panicky breaths I was taking. There were rescue boats stationed around our route, and I desperately wanted to dog-paddle over to one and have them lift me out of the melee. The only reason I didn’t was because of my team waiting on me. I had to finish the swim before Cindy could start the bike race and Erin could start the 5k run. My tapping-out would forfeit our whole team, and I didn’t want to have to tell them that I was too scared to do my part of the race.

Is there a swimming equivalent of limping? Because that’s what I did, in a big, terrifying triangle of lake. I took breaks from my jerky, panicky crawl stroke to turn over and do a jerky, panicky backstroke because it was easier to breathe that way, and less scary to look at the sky. It took forever. It took forever and a half.

I think I was the third to last person in my heat to finish. I know there was a much older lady serenely and slowly paddling her way around the lake, and we traded positions a lot. The moment I my feet could touch the bottom of the lake again, I scrambled to stand up and slog my way to the shore. I was exhausted, out of breath, shaky. It sucked. It sucked a lot. But I got to the hand-off area so my team could continue.

That’s how I feel about current events, really. Right now, a lot of things suck. Policies and words have come through that scare me, that make me shake. That leave me gasping for breath, worried I’m going to get sucked under by a black wave. Again, that’s not hyperbole: I’m afraid of the ways in which access to health care, women’s rights, a healthy planet to live on, and so many other things are poised to change. People might drown in it.

I can’t change that scary, on a large scale. I can’t drain the lake free of monsters, I can’t escape the crush of bodies all struggling to stay afloat next to me. I can’t do big things. But I can make little changes. I can donate money and time and thoughts and support. I can love and I can stay vocal and I can find small ways to make others happy. I can follow through when I say I will help, I will campaign, I will make a difference. That help doesn't end with a single phone call or a protest march or a Facebook post. Those help, but they're not the finish line. I can keep swimming. That’s not much, maybe, but it’s what I can do. It’s what I will do.  

Friends worth swimming for. 

Bonus: they're worth climbing for, too.