A Suburbian experience

Seattle and me wasn’t love at first sight. Or, should I say Seattle and me didn’t really get a chance to properly meet that first time. It was March 1993; we had taken off from our Swedish village just outside Umeå in the snow-melting season, leaving vinyl clothing and friends behind, not going to miss the first, but the second.

Sitting in the car, picked up at Seatac by Annie, the American grandmother to be, my first picture of Seattle was those huge orange cranes standing on their tall legs in the port, pointing to the water and downtown with their stretched necks. We were fascinated, my sons and I, peaking out from the back of the car, by those gigantic steel dinosaurs guarding the city. I didn’t know by then that they really do. How iconic and symbolic they are. Connecting the water, the Pacific Ocean and Asia to land and soil, Seattle and the US.

And then I didn’t really see Seattle for a while, cause that drive took us cross Lake Washington to one of those fresh townhouse neighborhoods that looks like it’s just been laid out; flower beds, well trimmed lawns, shining new cars perfectly parked in a spotless setting. I had landed in Suburbia.

The foreign planet Suburbia for three rainy spring months with two little boys, four and six years old. A planet empty of life except for the flowerbeds and the cars. A mystery it was. In the morning the cars were gone. In the evening they were back, all neatly parked on the driveway. We never saw anyone driving them, though. Or walking the lawns. Or picking up the newspaper from the mailboxes. We didn’t see one single person in the neighborhood except for the gardeners arriving in their trucks for three months! My sons created a safe cocoon for themselves, happy wrestling crazy giggling, unreachable to the world around. That’s when they became Trouble & Trouble, a nickname their American grandfather Harold came up with fondly tickling them to an even more hysterical craze.

So, we needed to break out of Suburbia. And we did. We saw Seattle from the top of the Space Needle, rode the Monorail, watched the Mariners loose at Kingdome, had blue berry pie in Twin Peaks Country, watched orcas on San Juan Island and did the Olympic Peninsula. It wasn’t possible to break out of the spring rain though. Forks and the rain forest in April was more Twilight than any devoted fan could ever dream of, and since this was pre vampire time it didn’t do us much good.

But. The sun and mid June came and The Emerald City and The Beautiful Northwest grew on me. Mount Rainier showed up like this unreal breath taking backdrop. Trouble & Trouble picked up their first English words and grandpa Harold regained some Swedish from his Montana childhood. Friendly people smiled and waved in the 4-way stops. Downtown was all shiny blue tall glass and the waterfront smelled exciting adventures on water and land.

And it was time to say goodbye. Time for Midsummer’s, the maypole and day light nights back in my northern Swedish village. Arriving there very different from when I departed. This planet that used to be so familiar had changed. No, Seattle hadn’t been love at first sight, but here I was, carrying a piece of the shining Emerald City in my heart. Knowing that I would need to return.