The secret sauce of a long marriage is the memories that connect two hearts and minds. Such is the case when Ken and I watched a TV show last evening. We mostly watch British TV because we find the stories and series more interesting. Less about shoot-em-ups and car chases – more about relationship building among characters and good writing. BBC, Acorn, and BritBox are our go-to platforms. Ken mentioned that we don’t have to visit England because it is in our home every day. It feels so familiar.
The title of one episode in the series, Professor T., was A Fish Named Walter. When the name came up on the TV, we looked at each other and started laughing. Not because it is a funny name, which it is, but because it relates to a dog who once upon a time adopted us. Is that a stretch? Not really. This is the story.
In 1982, we went to see the movie On Golden Pond. Norman Thayer, played by Henry Fonda, fished the pond near their summer home in search of the large fish he named Walter, that evaded being caught by him for years. One summer, he took a young boy, Billy, with him fishing, and they finally caught Walter. Norman insisted they throw him back.
The day after we saw the movie, we took a walk to our Medina neighborhood park and were talking about the film as we walked around its shallow pond. Engrossed in conversation, we were surprised when a small golden retriever popped up from the middle of the pond, swam toward us, shook itself off, and followed us around the path. We hadn’t seen the dog enter the pond, just pop up and swim out of it. We looked at each other and, laughing, said, “That must be Walter.”
We tried to discourage the dog, thinking it must belong to someone near the park, but it followed us all the way home. It didn’t have an identity tag or collar, so we couldn’t contact an owner. At that time, we had a six-year-old black lab, Quincey, but decided to allow the dog to stay with us, half expecting it would return to its home. Quincey and the new dog managed a friendly connection.
We continued to call her Walter even after we realized she was a she. Her name probably should have been Zsa Zsa or Marilyn. She was a stereotypical ditsy blonde, sweet and friendly, with soft brown eyes, golden locks, and a constant wag. The vet said she was a mature two or three-year-old mixed breed, mostly retriever, with no evidence of abuse or starvation, and she had been spayed. Someone had taken care of her. She had good manners. She didn’t jump on people, bark, or bite. She was house-trained. Our three kids instantly loved her, and she returned their affection.
She hung around the house, never leaving the yard, for weeks. Our yard wasn’t fenced. Our lab never left the property, and Walter seemed to like being there. We thought that if she had another home, she would eventually go back to it. After a couple of months, I bought a collar for her with a tag that read,’ Hi I’m Walter. If I am lost, please call Diana or Ken at 744-3374′.
Walter began to explore the neighborhood, always returning by dinnertime. I received calls occasionally from nearby people and some as far away as two miles, asking me to pick up our Walter. They usually had a chuckle in their voice when they said her name. We were trying to figure out how to keep her home. Our property was fairly large, and we didn’t like the idea of a fence, but we thought about making a dog run.
One Saturday afternoon, as I was getting ready for a party we were hosting, I received a call from a neighbor who lived around the corner. “Come get Walter,” she said. “She was hit by a car.” Ken went to pick her up to take her to the vet, but she had died. The end of our sweet Walter.
A sad story, but one that nonetheless makes us smile. Walter adopted us, lived with us, and loved us for a little over a year, until her wanderlust took her into danger.
As it happens, we watched On Golden Pond for the second time on TV just a few weeks ago. Seeing the title of the Britbox series’ episode made it all fresh in our minds. It was an emotional movie that had a very different meaning for us as 80-year-olds than it did as 30-somethings. We are both older now than the actors were when they played the old couple. Katharine Hepburn was 75 and Henry Fonda, 77.
Just as I wrote in my blog post about Captain Hershey on January 29, 2024, words have consequences. I had three interactions with then Officer Hershey in a two-year period. The first contact was the most impactful. He was the epitome of what a policeman is. He understood in the deepest way what it means to serve and protect, and the power he had to serve with his words, not with physical interactions.
If Officer Hershey had given me a speeding ticket and sent me on my way that morning, I would have paid the ticket, cursed under my breath, forgotten him, and probably sped down the hill again. Instead, he told me with his words that I mattered, that my speeding had consequences beyond the law. In short, he said, “Do you love your husband? Call him and take him to lunch. It will cost what this ticket should cost. Tell him you are sorry for endangering yourself.” I was immediately taken from the momentary annoyance of getting a traffic ticket to the bigger picture. My speeding on a hazardous road had consequences for someone other than me. I was endangering myself and impacting my husband. His words made a huge difference. I never went down that hill again (safely, I might add) without thinking of Officer Hershey and his words.
As a young mother, I occasionally told my kids exaggerated stories to make a point. One day, when they were about five, seven, and nine, I was talking about being self-sufficient. I think I was trying to show them how to make their own lunches. I said in an offhand way that when they turned twelve, they would be out of the house and had to prepare for it. I said they would be on their own. Our oldest understood the hyperbole, our youngest didn’t really care and blew it off, but our sensitive middle child took it to heart. Days and years passed, and on our eldest daughter’s eleventh birthday, I found Shari in her room crying.
“What’s the matter? Aren’t you going to help me get ready for Karen’s birthday party?”
“I feel so bad,” she said.
“Why?”
“She only has one more year to live with us.”
“What?”
“She has to leave when she is twelve. That’s what you told us.”
Click click click went my brain. I very vaguely remembered saying something like that. I never thought any of them would take it seriously, and think we would really kick them out of the house. At first, I thought it was funny that she believed me, then I realized she had lived with the burden of my words for two years. What kind of monster would hurt their own child with that kind of threat? Shari was devastated, and so was I. It took a lot of hugs and reassurances from both my husband and me to let her know she would determine when she wanted to move out at some point in the future. She said she would NEVER leave us. A smile returned to her pretty face, and her heart was lighter. The birthday party was on, and everyone was happy.
It is critical for all of us to choose our words, whether written or spoken, with care. We can impact someone for good or ill. That’s not to say you can never be critical, but there are words that can help even when you have a negative message.
Our book club read The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng earlier this year. In our discussion, the subject of the three Eastern religions arose, specifically Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. All three philosophies are represented in the story. In Buddhism, a primary tenet is reincarnation. In the story, the sensei, Endo-San, tells his pupil that they were connected in past lives and will be in future lives.
There were differing views on the idea of reincarnation in our book group. I volunteered my experience with our daughter, Shari, as an example of how spirits may be connected over and over across time.
In 1971, when Shari was three, she was watching out of our living room window as her friend, our six-year-old neighbor, Glenny, learned to ride his new Christmas bike on the street in front of our house.
She turned to me and said, “I used to have a bike just like that.”
“No, sweetie. You’ve never had a bike. We’ll get you one when you are a little bit older.”
“I did have a bike when I was a boy,” she said emphatically.
That took me back. What?
“But you’re a girl,” I countered. “You aren’t a boy.”
“Mommy”, she said with an exasperated tone. “No, when I WAS a boy. Then I fell out of a tree and died.”
Now, the concepts of being dead or a different gender were not subjects that ever came up in any of our discussions or games. I was a stay-at-home mom with three children, so I spent hours and hours with my kids. Nothing remotely close had ever been touched on in our play or conversations.
I asked her to tell me more, but she just shrugged and turned to watch Glenny again. It was the end of the conversation.
Later in the spring, she and I were in her room cleaning out her toy box to give away some old, used toys.
She stopped with a reflective look on her face. “Mommy, do you remember when we were Indians?”
I searched my memory for a time when we played Indian and couldn’t come up with anything.
“No, honey, I don’t. When did we play that?”
“We didn’t play it. I was the grandmother, and you were the baby, and I rocked you in my arms outside by the fire.”
Prickles ran up my arms. Again, she was telling me about an experience that she believed happened. She had changed our roles. She was the ancient one, and I, a baby. We were connected, but in different roles.
“When did that happen?” I asked. “Were we playing a game? Did you have a dream?”
“No.”
And that was the end of the memory. She had nothing more to add. She changed the subject to talk about the toys we were sorting. She lost the thought and didn’t want to explain more. It didn’t sound like a dream.
Shari was a very chatty child. She had a lot to say about everything and had an advanced vocabulary for her age. The concepts of death, gender, and role reversal in the extreme were not topics we ever talked about, except for those two instances. She seemed to wander into a reverie, then snap back to the present quickly and didn’t reconnect to the memory at all. When she was eleven or twelve, I asked her about those memories or if they were dreams, and she had no recollection of anything connected to it.
Those two experiences made me question the idea of reincarnation, and I did some research. Psychologists and researchers have documented children who spontaneously reveal memories from past lives. It happens from the age of two when speech is beginning, until about six, when children go to school and are infused with the day-to-day reality of this life. Many recorded cases have been detailed in books, magazine articles, and research papers. They can be ascribed to a rich fantasy imagination. My experience didn’t feel like imagination – it felt like Shari was telling me of real, very specific memories.
A few years ago, we were the caretakers of our grandson, Henry, from the age of one until he started school, while his mom worked weekdays. When he was three, he and a friend were playing in his room, building Lego forts, then bombing them with little rubber balls. He told his playmate that he had been in WWII and died.
From the time he was two, he had an uncommon attraction to guns. When he learned to draw, he drew gun-like figures. When I was teaching him the geography of the U.S., he picked out Florida as his favorite state because it looked like a gun. He bit his cheese sandwich into the shape of a gun. We never had guns or been around them, and certainly never talked about them. I asked my daughter if she had talked about war or guns with him, and she said no, but that he did talk about it when he was home too.
We took Henry to story hour at the library every week, and afterward, we would look for books to check out. He only wanted to pick out books in the history section about WWII or any war. We checked out big volumes. At home, he sat and looked at the pictures and asked me to read parts of the books related to those pictures.
Henry earned TV time by doing small tasks around the house. Usually, he watched old TV shows like Mayberry RFD or a science kid show. One day he watched a documentary about Churchill and war strategy on the History channel. He never took his eyes off of it for the entire hour. He asked me to find war documentaries when he had TV time, not cartoons or kid shows. He wanted to talk about wars, WWI, WWII, and the Civil War. They fascinated him. All that disappeared when he got to school, and it hasn’t been part of his life since.
I certainly learned a lot about wars while I was attempting to satisfy his curiosity. It is a mystery to me how a very young child can connect to experiences they didn’t have in their three or four years on the planet but are able to make them seem real. Could they have been here before? Is it totally imagination? It is a mystery.
PS: I recommend The Gift of Rain. It is about Malaysia during WWII, an area of the world I knew little about. It is the coming-of-age story of a young man, half-English, half-Chinese, with a Japanese teacher. All three cultures collide in his story during the turbulence of war. The concepts in the story are interesting, even if the main character is a bit flat. Questions of loyalty and betrayal are examined.
If you are interested in a recent report regarding children with past life memories, this is a link to a study reported by the University of Virginia, School of Medicine.
A short post to acknowledge all who died in service to our country. God Bless. Not a holiday to say “happy”, but a day to remember those who protected us. They gave their lives so we could live ours in peace.
Red Ass, B24 Liberator
I especially want to thank my father, Jesse Dale Davis who served honorably in WWII as a gunner aboard B-24 Liberator bombers, especially The Red Ass that led the entire 8th Air Force from England to Normandy, France on the D-Day invasion. He was wounded during his twenty-eight bombing raids across Germany, and occupied France, and Holland. He recovered from the physical wounds. The emotional scars remained for his entire life. He provided a comfortable life for his family until his death at age 52. He covered the trauma left in his psyche with wit and humor and never talked about his wartime experiences. Thank you, Dad. I miss you daily and wish we could have talked about your war experiences.
I also want to remember and honor contemporaries who gave their lives in Vietnam – their destiny cut short. They served our country with an innocence of belief in what our leaders said was important. Both were barely 21.
Paul Michael Gregovich DOB: 6/16/46. He died on July 15, 1967, in Vietnam Quang Tin province.
Dennis Quentin Zambano DOB: 10/14/46. He died on October 15, 1967, in South Vietnam Bing Dinh Province.
And to the thousands of others who we don’t call by name, Thank You for your sacrifice.
Standing on the brink of eighty, I have so much past and a diminished amount of future. I must keep reminding myself of that because I don’t feel a day over thirty-five, and my tomorrows still seem endless. I’m listening to friends and colleagues about all they are doing to prepare for their inevitable end. Things like clearing out closets and storage so their heirs are not overwhelmed with the detritus of their lives.
That’s a good idea even if you are not anticipating the Grim Reaper. It cleanses the mind to get rid of stuff instead of stuffing it in nooks and crannies. The same can be said of ideas and memories. They can be aired out, shared with the world, or discarded entirely.
I have so many wonderful remembrances to look back on, I don’t dwell on woes. Among my very happiest memories, besides my relationships, are my stories. I have written countless stories, character sketches, and poems over the years. Only in the last twenty years have I shared any of them. I wrote for myself. As a matter of fact, no one in my family even knew I was a writer. Of course, I didn’t call myself a writer then because to me that was an exalted status far above my humble reach. You know Hemingway, Huxley, du Maurier, Woolf, Rowling, Fitzgerald, Austin, Dickens, and so many more I admire. When I took my first writing class, I was told that if I write, even in secret, I AM a writer. Hallelujah! Now I can say it out loud.
When we moved from the Pacific Northwest to Southern Arizona, I tossed out volumes of diaries, journals, and notebooks of my writing. I figured I’d never have any reason to revisit them. It was my secret life. By chance, some were overlooked, so I have dribs and drabs of my early reflections on life, including my senior year of high school. I would love to look through all those old notebooks again to see how my perspective may have changed.
I started blogging as a marketing tool for a book I co-authored three years ago. It was fun. I was hooked. I started asking my husband to read stories I write for my critique group and blog. He was surprised that I wrote. Fortunately, he likes my writing. At least he says he does. He is not a literary critic, only a reader. He has never liked reading books, so my short essays or reminiscences are just the ticket. Longer projects I have written require an editorial type of review. For now, I’m enjoying the interaction I receive from readers at the Oro Valley Writers’ Forum, my critique group, and my online blog.
I encourage EVERYONE who likes to put pen to paper or tap away on a computer to consider themselves A WRITER. Find a writers’ group that agrees to read and critique your stories. It is a way of strengthening your skills and receiving feedback for your ideas. Writer groups are formed in writing classes given through Pima or the U. of A. The Oro Valley Writers’ Forum at the Oro Valley Library is another place to meet writers and share ideas. It is never too late to share your perspectives with the world. Everyone has a story. Every day is a story. Don’t live in a secret world. Clear out your closet of ideas and reveal your insights through fiction stories, non-fiction, memoir, or poetry. Your voice is an important thread in the fabric of humanity. We have so much more in common than in opposition.
I apologize to anyone who was misled by the title of this piece, thinking there might be some delicious salacious tidbits in the offing. Eighty years have been filled with a myriad of highs and lows, disappointments, and missteps. My deepest, darkest secrets are still locked away in my journals. Some are delicious in retrospect. They may see the light of day at some point.
Today is one of those not-quite-sunny-but-definitely-not-raining days, so we’ll go to another part of Seattle where I once worked, Leschi. It is on the east border of Seattle along Lake Washington, just north of the Lacey V. Morrow floating bridge (the second longest floating bridge in the world, next to the other Lake Washington Evergreen Point Bridge further north on the Lake, which is the longest in the world). Lake Washington is a navigable body of water about 22 miles long. It is deep enough for ocean-going vessels to enter its ports through the canal, then down to the south end. Across Lake Washington, further east of Seattle, are Bellevue and Medina, where my family lived.
Leschi is a mix of beautiful homes, from craftsman bungalows built in the early 1900s to stately Tudors and contemporary homes built later. It was originally a place for summer cottages, but now it is an enclave for multi-million-dollar lakefront properties. I remember the day when, in one of those million-dollar waterfront mansions at Leschi, Kurt Cobain shot himself in the head, leaving Nirvana headless. Sorry, bad joke.
In the late 80s, I worked for two companies at 120 Lakeside Avenue in Leschi. Both were headed by multi-millionaires. First, I worked for a venture capitalist S.S. Besides being a successful entrepreneur, he was a philanthropist. He owned a mall in north Seattle and a prominent grocery chain, which became part of Kroger. He donated to various charities and supported an inner-city elementary school with a $1 million per year endowment. There were only five of us in the office. I was hired as a secretary/receptionist with general office duties. He didn’t have much work that challenged me, and I had time on my hands. It was while working in his office that I taught myself computer skills – back in the day of DOS.
One story about S.S. that I remember was when my husband and I decided to purchase a boat. I told S.S. we were looking around for a modest sailboat. He owned a sailboat, did a lot of cruising, and had some good advice. One piece of advice though, depicts the difference between his place in the world and ours. Speaking very earnestly, he told me to be sure the sailboat had a washer and dryer onboard so that when we were out cruising for weeks, we could have clean clothes. I know my mouth gaped when he said it, but I recovered and thanked him for his advice. His idea of a sailboat was more YACHT than boat. On neither of the boats we eventually owned was there room, let alone hookups, for a washer and dryer. Nor did we cruise for more than ten days at a time. Oh well, a girl can dream.
Later, I went to work for his friend T.L., who, with his partner D.S., managed the upscale commercial building of offices, retail, a marina, and gas dock on the shore of the lake. S.S. bragged to T.L. about my computer skills, and T.L. was just beginning to get savvy about computers for his company. He offered me a job with challenge and a better salary, so I left S.S. We all remained friendly. T.L.’s offices were downstairs from S.S. Cabin cruisers, yachts, fishing boats, kayaks, commercial hauling boats, ski boats, and sailboats paraded past the lakeside windows of my office daily. I managed and leased office space and kept books for the dock facilities. I also set up their computerized accounting system. Those who know me will laugh. I am terrible with numbers, but I do understand computerized systems. Well, I did then when they were less complicated than today.
Let’s have lunch at BluWater; it used to be the Leschi Café when I worked there. They had the very best clam chowder in town. Well, maybe second best next to Duke’s. It’s a nice enough day so we can sit on the patio with a jacket on, watch the boats, and look across the lake to the city of Bellevue, connected to Seattle by the floating bridge. Until the 1940s, the only way to get across Lake Washington was by ferry boat. You can now zip across quickly in your powerboat or go across one of two bridges.
Our son and his friend Mike sometimes skipped a class in high school on a nice day and drove Mike’s speedboat across the lake to my office. I treated them to lunch at the pizza restaurant downstairs in our building before they went back to school. I was not a terribly strict mother. I’ve always felt that experience trumps classroom learning. I occasionally practiced the art of experiential learning as a high school student.
Big Ships at dock during Fleet Week
The last week of July is the celebration of SeaFair, with SeaFair royalty and pirates in the torchlight parade, boat parades on Lake Washington, Navy Blue Angels exhibitions, Boeing airshows, Fleet Week in Elliott Bay with tours of big naval ships, and all manner of hilarity. The size of those naval ships is astonishing. Both of my mother’s brothers were in the Navy during WWII. My Uncle Johnny described his harrowing experience in the Battle of Leyte Gulf and recommended a book, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors. It is about a different naval battle, but he said it brings the feelings to life. In his later years, he talked about it rather matter-of-factly, but I sensed the emotions it brought back.
Hydroplane races on Lake Washington during SeaFair
One of the most exciting things I remember about SeaFair is the hydroplane races. Flat-bottom boats with powerful airplane engines race each other around a course reaching 200+ mph, lifting off the water. It is thrilling to watch their explosive water fantails shoot high in the warm August air. Just as in car races, their roar is so loud you remain deafened for a few hours afterward. SeaFair was a highlight of my youthful summers, I think, because it was usually such a nice weather week with so many diversions.
To continue our Seattle tour, we’ll drive up and over First Hill, one of the original seven hills of Seattle, which we called “pill hill” because of three big hospitals located there. Now we’re in the Central area, the most ethnically diverse neighborhood. It started as a Jewish settlement and is still the home of Temple de Hirsch Sinai, the largest Jewish congregation in Washington. Rabbi Raphael Levine was the leader of that congregation when I lived in Seattle and he was a towering presence throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s, fighting for civil rights and brotherhood. A Buddhist Church is nearby as well as a Japanese Congregational Church. The Central area had the highest population of blacks in Seattle. The Central area was the childhood home of Jimi Hendrix, Dave Lewis, Quincy Jones, and Bruce Lee, and a staging area for the Black Panther movement in the 60s.
I remember the Central area most because that is where I often went when I skipped school in my senior year. One of the high schools in the area is Garfield. Garfield’s basketball, track, and football teams made the championships every year in the 50s and 60s. In 1963, they had a jukebox in their lunchroom. One of my friends, Kelly, had a car, and her boyfriend, John, was a basketball player on the Garfield team. Kelly and I would leave our school in Bellevue at about 11:30 in the morning and drive across the lake to Garfield to dance to the music and eat our lunch with John and his friends. We got back to our school in time for last period and went home at the proper time. We had friends in the attendance office who made sure we were marked present officially during that time. Can’t get away with that these days.
One time, Kelly and I were walking the halls of Garfield on our way to the lunchroom when a phalanx of large – think football player – young black men with their arms across each other’s shoulders blocked the hall, wall to wall. They wore serious eye-squinting faces as they marched toward us. There was no escape except to go through them. We did. We ducked under their arms. They broke out in laughter. Hearts pounding, we were relieved it was a prank, not a threat.
My French teacher was suspicious and called my house one day when I missed her class one time too many. Usually, that was no big deal because both of my parents worked, so she would not have reached anyone. This was in ancient days before cell phones and message machines. Just my luck, my father was home sick that day, and she told him I missed French class several times in a few weeks. When I got home at the regular time, my father greeted me at the door.
“Where were you all day?” he asked. “School,” I said with total truthfulness, I left out that I had been in two different schools. “Miss D called to say you were not in class today and had been absent several times.” At that point, I was speechless. I thought I had everything pretty well covered. “I’ll ask again. Where were you?” “I was at school,” I insisted, but then admitted, “At lunchtime, Kelly and I went to Garfield to see John. When we got back, it was too late to go to French, but I did get to my last class.” “Don’t do it again,” he admonished, but I could see he was stifling a grin, knowing that was an empty directive. “I told her you came home and weren’t feeling well. She’s watching you.” Then, as an aside, “And don’t let your mother know, you know how she is.” Dad always had my back.
That was the end of the conversation and the end of the episode. Miss D didn’t give up trying to catch me, and I strived to get back in time for her class when we skipped for lunch. I got a B in French (a class I really liked). In retrospect, I think Miss D was one of the teachers who actually cared about my future. She tried her best to give me advice, even keeping me after class to explain how I was cheating myself and that I had so much potential. I blew it off, but I remember her now as a mentor, a failed mentor, but not from lack of trying. It was not the end of my “experiential learning”. My mother never learned about my truancy until I told her years later, after my dad died, that he had been a co-conspirator in my escapades. Her remark was, “That sounds like your dad.”
I graduated with a respectable B average and was accepted to Washington State University for the fall. I liked school and classes, but I enjoyed being a little rebellious, too. I do not think I learned a lesson or reaped the consequences for my misdeeds. Although my college career was short-lived, it was a fun year. That is another story entirely.
On our next tour, we will visit Discovery Park in Magnolia, Elliott Bay, and Queen Anne. I will tell you a little about living on our sailboat.
This poem was written six years ago after the death of a dear childhood friend. Years accumulated without contact between us. In her final months, she reached out to me, a tender reminder of the bond we formed over sixty years before as twelve-year-old girls. Our families both relocated to Bellevue, Washington the summer before our 7th grade year at school; hers from Oregon, mine from Kansas. We were the newbies so naturally clung to each other as we learned how to navigate a new school and integrate into a new community of teens. She will always be a happy memory. Today is her birthday – Happy Birthday, Gerry.
Recently, I visited Seattle, where I have not lived for over 28 years. It was a short, impromptu visit to see our daughter. The weather was atrocious, but the company was great. She and I had a nice long time to share memories and reconnect. However, I was reminded of the reason Ken and I fled to southern Arizona.
This essay, which I will publish in several parts, is based on memory and journal notes from the years when I lived there and shortly thereafter. The Seattle we left is not the same as the present-day city. None of the reports from people who live there are especially favorable about the conditions in the city, relating stories of homelessness and crime. I witnessed a few of the changes in the days I was there. Traffic is abominable – a moving parking lot, very like LA. I have no desire to return. I’d rather live with lovely memories of what was.
SEATTLE
I want to tell you about a city I hated, but grudgingly learned to appreciate. I was a captive for nearly 40 years under gray, drizzly skies, wrapped in its suffocating blanket of onshore flow and tedious droplet-laden air. How does one breathe when the air is saturated with water? Seattle has an enormous diversity of smells, sights, and textures, but the overriding constant is wet, moldy dampness. During the day, the vibration of color is muted because of the lack of light, sunshine. Color doesn’t exist without light. Everything is enveloped in dimness. When you look up, you see a dull white sky. Haze covers the bright orb we were told was the sun. A clear blue sky is rare. Seattle has one of the highest rates of suicide in the US. I can certainly understand why. It has the distinction of being the US city with the highest sales of sunglasses. You use them on a sunny day, then by the time another sunny day arrives, the sunglasses have been lost or seriously misplaced, and you must buy another pair. Mine were found once in the freezer…but that’s another story.
Contrary to common thought, it doesn’t really rain in Seattle; it fatally mists you. It would be a welcome change if rain actually fell, fat full drops in quantities of a tipped-over horse trough. But no, gloomy clouds hang low overhead, spritzing gauzy water day and night. The average rainfall in Seattle is less than in Little Rock, Arkansas, Atlanta, Georgia, Lexington, Kentucky, or New York City. In those places, rain falls with intent – the intent to make things wet. In Seattle, you can walk around all day in the vaporous fog and never have a single drop of rain slide down your face, but you are damp nonetheless from the outside to the bone. You can walk between raindrops in Seattle and be saturated by the artifice of rain.
My father accepted a transfer with Boeing to Seattle in 1957. I was ripped from the wide open sunny plains of my Kansas home as a child of eleven and whisked off to the Pacific Northwest, boxed in by low clouds and lofty, dark, sentry-like evergreens. You cannot see many vistas or horizons in Seattle because of those damn giant black-green trees. I became a victim of Stockholm syndrome. I learned to identify with and, grudgingly, admire the city that was my captor.
Now that I am liberated from its bondage, I visit the city with an entirely different attitude. I appreciate its energy, its diverse population, and its distinct neighborhoods. I still do not admire the weather. There are approximately five sunny days sometime between late July and late August, and then another five in February. On those rare days, the city is stunningly beautiful – a dazzling jewel nestled at the base of the snowcapped Cascade Mountains between Lake Washington on the east and the cerulean sparkle of Puget Sound to the west. On clear days, you can see Mount Baker to the North, and Mount Rainier looms up over the city to the South.
Let me take you on a virtual tour of my Seattle, some of the places that have meaning and memory for me.
Our tour begins. It is a liquid, dark September night, and light from building signs reflects on the drenched black asphalt of Pine Street. The street shimmers with smears of circus colors like a Monet painting in front of the Inn at the Market, where I stay when visiting, and Sur La Table next door. Pine Street slides with a 9% grade downhill west. From the front of the hotel, you see over the top of the Pike Place Market at the end of the block to the waterfront and Puget Sound beyond. We are on the western edge of downtown Seattle proper.
Jazz music flows from The Pink Door in Post Alley, playing deep into this night. The Alley, just above the Market, is where the Market Theater and the gum wall are. The gum wall is a brick wall of chewed gum in a variety of colors, grape, cherry, lime, and plain gray spearmint, originally created by people who stood in line to go to the theater. Years of ordinance after ordinance failed to keep that wall clean. It became a bizarre tourist attraction that turned up in the movie “Love Happens”.
You can’t talk about Seattle without mentioning Starbucks. Starbucks started here near Pike Place Market in the 1970s. Now, it’s an international megalith for coffee worshipers. The Starbucks at Pike Place still has the original logo with the bare-breasted Norse maiden in the middle of the medallion. I’m generally a tea person. A nice cup of double-strength Irish Breakfast Coffee is my morning wakeup. I prefer Seattle’s Best for coffee because it doesn’t seem as bitter. Coffee, anyone?
Seattle is a city of frenzied days fueled by Starbucks (one on every corner with kiosks mid-block), people traveling up and down endless rain-slicked hills, and long nights lubricated by microbreweries like Pike Brewing Company and Elliot Bay Brewery, and lots of good music. We’ll stop by Kell’s Irish Pub for a short one and then turn in. The tour will continue tomorrow.
Good morning, we’ll start our tour here near the famous Pike Place Market where “flying fish” are sold. I’m sure you have all seen this well-known marketplace on TV or the internet. The owner and staff of the Pike Place Fish Market made a video of their shop and developed a motivational training program for employees who work with the public based on the Fish Philosophy of “Play, Be There, Choose your Attitude and Make Their Day”. The fish sellers have great fun with shoppers at the Market, throwing whole fish back and forth to each other like footballs over the heads of wary customers, using rhyme and signals to let each other know a fish is coming their way. An unsuspecting patron often nearly gets hit by a fish thrown in his direction, but caught at the last possible second by one of the fishmongers. A massive slippery open-mouthed monkfish lures you close and then jumps at you. Pike Place Market is a destination for most Seattle tourists. The high-jinks are worth the trip.
If you have the time, enjoy this six-minute video of the Fish Philosophy.
Pike Place Market exudes tantalizing aromas of newly picked farm produce, the woody, musky tang of incense, and the sweet bouquet of flowers, plus the salty ocean smell of fresh fish.
My favorite shop in the Market is Tenzing MoMo. An intense potpourri of frankincense, myrrh, ylang-ylang, patchouli, and sandalwood beckons you into the dark, magical, Asian inspired apothecary. They deal in herbs, tarot cards, chai tea, brass bells, ear candles, essential oils, and all manner of other necessities. It is deep in the belly of the Market which is built on a cliff plunging three stories down from the street. The top floor, at street level on the east side, looks westward across Elliot Bay toward Puget Sound. My favorite restaurant at the top level is a French bistro, Maximilien’s, with a terrace that allows a 180-degree view of the Sound. I cannot resist the Croque Monsieur.
Pike Place Market was created in the first decade of the 1900s as a fresh produce co-op market for local farmers. It retains that promise but has expanded to include buskers, homemade baked goods, handmade clothing and jewelry, antique dealers, restaurants, comic-book vendors, and crafts – something for everyone. The Market also houses a senior center, a childcare center, a medical clinic serving the working poor, elderly, and HIV-positive patients, and has HUD-subsidized housing for about 500 people. Rachel, a big brass pig, nearly three feet tall, greets visitors at the front of the Market. Her snout is rubbed for luck. She is a giant piggy bank that collects coins for charities supported by the Market.
In the early 80s, I worked six blocks from the Market up the insanely steep hill on Pine Street at the Bon Marché Department Store in their construction department. Often on my lunch hour, I negotiated the incredible downhill to the Market, roaming the nine acres of vendor stalls for something delish for lunch. My family was treated to the farm-fresh produce for dinner. Then I trudged up the hill with my treasures, back to work – my exercise for the day.
Next time, I will take you through a little history of Seattle, a smidge of the underground tour, and The Seattle Toilet History (a remarkable story).
I recently encountered an individual who said they were in pursuit of happiness. They had experienced some setbacks in life and were feeling low and had been counseled to make happiness a priority.
I posited, on the contrary, the pursuit of happiness is a hollow pursuit. Happiness is a feeling, a mood. Happiness is insubstantial, subjective. It comes and goes. It is transitory.
Gratitude, on the other hand, is concrete. With an attitude of gratitude, you cannot help but be happy. You look around you to sense the beauty of nature or reflect on the objects in your home that you bought or have been gifted, and remember the why, when, and who of each object. Remember the happiness that each object brought when it was newly purchased or received. Gratitude for friendship. Gratitude for family. Gratitude for the people who serve us in our daily activities, from the grocery store to medical professionals to our military and law enforcement, who keep us safe.
You can use your God-given senses to appreciate and be grateful for – the spring smell of blossoms or the scent of your lover’s warm skin; the taste of chocolate or the first cup of coffee in the morning; the softness of a kitten’s fur or the feel of an embrace; the sound of birds calling or a favorite song that makes you want to sing; a wonderous sunset in a desert sky or glistening raindrops that inch down a window pane. Gratitude for being alive in this tangible world is what actual happiness is. Beyond this world, the spiritual realm conveys meaning to life. The comfort of God or whatever spiritual practice you observe is a specific conduit to happiness.
I think of my friend Diane, who told me one day many years ago that she was diagnosed with ALS, a death sentence. Not just a death sentence, but a torturous journey through advancing body paralysis. The prospect she looked toward was months, possibly a couple of years of her body slowly becoming frozen while her mind remained alert. That sounds like torture of the worst kind, being fully coherent as body parts are rendered useless, slowly dying piece by piece. Diane was the most vibrant, energetic person I knew. She could do anything.
She decided to master the grand piano at the age of 40, having never played piano before, and she did it. She set a goal in May of her first year of lessons to give a caroling party by Christmas, and she met that goal. She printed out the words of each carol for all the participants. Each year her playing became more powerful, proficient, and complex. We loved hearing her advancing abilities. Her friends coveted invitations to her Christmas caroling parties. Over the years, she became more skilled and her repertoire more sophisticated, so that she was invited to piano competitions across the country.
She made it a point to tell me that she was going to be happy until the end. She was going to be GRATEFUL for every day she had and for every little thing that she could do day by day. She was an amazing inspiration. She traveled with her family and went on cruises. She continued to practice the piano until she could no longer make her fingers do her bidding. She had parties at her house until she was incapable of managing it. She played golf until she couldn’t stand and walk. She kept in touch with friends until the only part of her body that moved was her eyes. She could only speak through a computer that she manipulated with her eyes. She was always grateful to have people around her and, to the end, said people were what meant the most to her. She created her happiness from her gratitude for every small thing.
I remember when I was sidelined by two broken ankles. I realized how much walking, moving myself from place to place, meant to me. Even though I had a scooter, it was not the same as the independence of standing and walking on my own. I was very jealous of people I saw walking past my house or on the street as Ken drove me around. Then and there, I promised myself that when my ankles healed, I would not only walk every day, but I would appreciate each step. Still today, I am so grateful to Dr. Ty for his surgical skill, his encouragement, and his humor as I recovered step by agonizing step to be fully functional again. I’m grateful for a body that healed so well. I’m grateful to Ken for his care and patience as I rehabbed. I am not a patient patient, so I’m sure my mood was not the best, but he persevered and encouraged me when I was exasperated.
Today I am grateful for Ken’s commitment to his own therapy. As a man with Parkinson’s Disorder, he works two or three hours, sometimes more, each day to stave off the impact of the mayhem being perpetrated on his body by his own brain. He is learning to overcome some of the effects by retraining his brain. Automatic functions like walking, speech, and swallowing are diminished day by day with this disorder. He must fight to consciously instruct each part of his body to do his bidding. He has to walk, each step with intent. He has to talk, each word with intent. Nothing is taken for granted because those abilities are slowly eroding. He is exhausted at the end of a short walk, not because of weak legs or feet but because his brain has to work so hard to create each movement. Talking wears him out because he has to force his voice to be at a level he can be heard. He must enunciate each word slowly in order to be clear. Parkinson’s robs him of volume and makes his words slur into a jumble of incoherence unless he articulates each one carefully. His throat muscles are compromised so coughing and choking are ever present. His physical therapy includes muscle rehab and balance training. There are days when I know the struggle is enormous. His attitude is “never give in”. He is rewarded by being able to do as much as any 80-year-old can do. He’s not 17 anymore, but still enjoys his life. For all the effort he makes,I am grateful.
Gratitude is an affirmation of life. Stay grateful and happiness will be the consequence.
wonkagranny 