Cherry memories

I am told this weekend is the peak of the cherry trees blooming in Seattle, I wish I was there!

My first memory of the tree blossoming season in Seattle was 1993. We arrived March 22 and our first Seattle home was actually over at Eastside. The cherry tree blooms covered the ground for Trouble & Trouble 4 and 6 years old to play with outside our townhouse in Juanita, Kirkland. We had left the white spring-winter in Sweden for the great adventure, and the cherry trees were snowing!

For me, one of my most exotic Seattle memories is from spring 1997 when we had our home for the year at Portage Bay. Packing our downhill ski equipment on and in our 1981 silver Buick while the cherry trees in the alley told Swedes it was summer. Driving the one hour trip up to the Snoqualmie ski area. Met by tons of snow and great skiing. In the late afternoon heading back to Seattle welcomed by summer. I can still feel the fascinating magic of it.

To Seattleites that’s all spring. But to a Swede from the northern parts of the country it’s summer and winter in a wonderful and amazing package. 2 for the price of 1! I remember Trouble 2 (now 9) having a burger in the sun at one of the ski drive in restaurant porches announcing: this is life!

During my commuting years following I loved packing my bags here at the end of the road this time of year, crossing the ocean, landing in Seattle. Filling my lungs with the fresh sent of moist red cedar and my eyes with the white and pink color from the cherries blooming all over town. Still now, I can sense my body and mind expanding from joy of once again arriving in my second home so different from my first; Away is Home, Home is Away. Just wanting to stay there forever.

I celebrated my 45th birthday on one of those visits. It wasn’t a happy birthday, at least to start with. I was separated going for divorce. I felt old. I had a future in mind which I knew wouldn’t happen. But I had a new semi professional video camera!

I woke up in the morning feeling heavy and sad about my whole situation. But I made a conscious decision to pick myself up. And I started playing with my camera. As soon as I looked through the view finder my heart went pounding. I put the gear in my car and headed towards Seattle from Lynnwood where I stayed at my friend/sister Autumn’s. 

I still remember the footage I shot at the marina east of Gasworks Park. Lying on the docks composing the pictures with houseboats, water and blooming cherry treas. I felt a lot better!

Continuing to Seattle Center. The sun was out, and the colors and shapes of Frank Gehry’s Experience Music Project making me go on for hours, and yeah, catching the Monorail through it!

I remember someone calling me on my way to the parking lot, might it have been Craig? By now I felt so good about the day I told him it was my birthday. Like I had to share it with someone. And of course he congratulated me and I have this image of cherry trees surrounding me, is there even cherry trees at the Seattle Center parking lot?

In the evening my friends all gathered in a Madrona pub for me. It feels surreal now but they were all there: Matt and Elisabeth and daughter Becca, Terry and Doug and kids Reed and Zoe, Maria and little Niko, Annie and Harold, and of course my aunt Helen. My sister Autumn didn’t show though, she basically stood me up!

I was pretty darned disappointed and mad at her as I drew back to her house. Hours later she walked in. Well, the thing was, she had been delayed at work. Which I think had turned to a bar or pub thing. Because there was this new guy… and he was trouble…

I actually got to meet this new guy (shall we call him Trouble 3?) some days later. I frankly didn’t think that wold last. I was vey wrong. She stood me up for the Man in Her Life which she met on March 14, my 45th birthday, meanwhile the cherry trees were blooming on all of us.

Letting go of my dream life/part 1

It looks like the sun will be out in Seattle all week! I am happy for all Seattleites who have had the greyest and wettest winter (starting October) in history, but also for Trouble 2 and Audrey who arrived in Seattle some days ago and will stay through the month.

In 2007 I was planning on starting spending more time in Seattle. My sons were growing up and I was picturing myself in the beautiful Emerald City 2-3 months a year, although spread out in about three periods.

I definitely perceived this time as a turning point in my life. My marriage was over. Both my parents had passed away. My sons changing to young men moving in with their girlfriends. And my start up business feeling the air under it’s wings. This was my time coming up.

I knew exactly what I wanted. I remember sitting on the deck of the Bainbridge ferry one of those gorgeous sunny Seattle summer days feeling it right into my bones: this is where I want to be. This is where I should be. This is where I need to be. This is where I must be. This is where I’m meant to be! 

It wasn’t news to me, I had been in love with this gorgeous city ever since we stayed the year 1996-97. Drinking the Portage Bay view from our living room window and driving through Arboretum in the afternoons picking up my sons at school. So I had been waiting for and heading for this moment for ten years. As my sons’ father had left Sweden a couple of years earlier, it couldn’t be full time though, which was okay. Three months a year would do fine as a start. My heart and roots were in my little Swedish village. Seattle was my lungs and the wind in my hair.

I was pretty sure too the Seattle environment would be good soil for my business. Communicating with storytelling was brand new in Sweden at this time, and it’s a tough job to create both a product and a market. Even in Seattle I had to do a lot of explaining on what I was doing, but there was definitely a curiosity and a more matur market.

So, the plan was to find clients and assignments in Seattle. And to create an environment for myself where I could feel like a professional. I was very grateful to all my friends who had let me stay in their basements for a lot of commuting years, but I now desired my own place. I wanted to buy me a city condo with water view, in purpose of renting it when I wasn’t there myself. Now, that utopia stops right there as there was no way I could come up with that kind om money, but the idea was great as well as intriguing.

No, I had to start at a different end. And I did. I bought myself a car. That’s a story by itself, a good one, and I am saving it for a different post. Anyway, I now had my own car! Bliss! That’s the most adequate word for how I felt about that car. And about myself in that car. Driving in Seattle. My city. My car. A Dodge Stratus ES year 2000 with an electric roof window. Leather seats. Color, I would say latte. And driving it… I’ve had some car experiences in my life, but driving that car was pure joy.

Now, as I couldn’t purchase a home I had to find a solution for all my stuff. To start with, there was the Tempure Pedic mattress which my body is addicted to for sleeping. I keep it in an U.S. domestic mail sack. And then there was those special things I wanted to hold on too. My cereal bowl, my tea cup, fragments of my Boyer Avenue home. And all the items so unpractical dragging cross the ocean several times a year: blow drier, schampoo, electric tooth brush, lotions, bath robe, shoes, clothes… Over the years it’s added up to three good size storage boxes. Stored in friends basements. Oh, those friends…

I didn’t want to be a burden to them anymore. And the solution eventually became a storage unit on Martin Luther King Ave half way to SeaTac airport. I really liked the number on that unit. And the view of the new light rail from where the elevator was. It wasn’t a city condo with a water view but it was something. It was my something.

You know all those stories you hear about people changing their lives for the better? Being at a crossroad starting walking towards a goal. I always wonder how that happens. How a plan actually becomes a reality. Mission completed. Doesn’t life intervene? Put up hinders?

This was my crossroad. And I was determined. Absolutely sure I would live a part time Seattle life. Feeling it into my bones. Meant to be.

How wrong I was. First my back crashed, although temporarily I hoped. Then I got cancer. And then my back crashed for good. 

I have been back in Seattle. But only for vacation. I have been driving my car, but only briefly. And I have actually had the experience of city condos with water views. Amazing pent houses, although momentary homes for my cereal bowl and tea cup.

Trouble 2 and Audrey is driving my beloved car right now. But the Doge Stratus seems to have lost it’s former glory since I last drove it in 2012. And my storage unit has turned expensive over the years meanwhile the Swedish crona is not an asset towards the dollar anymore. So.

Now is the time. Trouble 2 and Audrey have promised me to clean out my storage as a favor to having access to a free car. And I am preparing to say goodbye to my never achieved goal and dream life. I’ve known for some years now that it is the only thing to do. It’s just so hard to let go.

Ship ahoy!

Oh how I loved being in Seattle during the Holiday Season! Just loved it!!

The Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Westlake Mall! The lit up Downtown, crazy with Christmas shoppers! The ferries filled with dressed up people going to Christmas parties! The neighborhoods competing about the most insane over-the-top light displays! But most of all I love the Christmas Ships!

For many years I made sure getting my dosage of Seattle Holidays. I packed my bags in December with an assignment of a story for Swedish National Radio or Television as an excuse and headed over for a week-ten days in a rainy city making the lights even more vibrant in the reflecting puddles.

I shot Seattle Men’s Chorus in Beneroya Hall and the Dreamliner Virtual Rollout, I reported about the different ingredients of the American Holidays and about The Washington Software Alliance. I told the story of the Cool House, the new city public library and I interviewed the author Russel Banks on a Seattle December visit. I also spent days sitting at the Blackbird Bakery on Bainbridge Island working on the texts for my photo show Away is Home, Home is Away. A couple of times the visit was postponed to right after Christmas, making me spend New Years in the Emerald City!

The Holiday memory I treasure the most though is the year we stayed in Seattle. Cause there can’t be any better place for a Holiday experience than Portage Bay overlooking the Montlake Cut!

Our place for the year was a small house that didn’t look like much from the outside, but was such a wonderful little home for my family. It was on Boyer Avenue about five blocks from University Bridge, and Portage Bay was the best entertainment all year round. I used to have my afternoon tea lying in my cushy cream colored love seat watching whatever was going on down on the bay through my big panorama window. I never got tired of that view! All those boats in different shapes and sizes! Trouble & Trouble and I had our different Argosy cruise ships favorites. Come to think of it, Trouble 2 and I actually agreed on the same preference.

This weekend is the opening for the Christmas Ships in Seattle. And I know exactly what Portage Bay looks like this evening! A parade of lit up, dressed up, spruced up boats glittering and glimmering in the dark night! And some of them have music, choirs singing on the black water!

Trouble 2 and I could sit for hours watching the floating lights waiting for our ship. Here it comes, there it is! Let’s just sit here forever and enjoy this! Oh how I miss that! And where did that little boy go?

Actually, he and Audrey are down in my kitchen making dinner for us. He is right here. In the woods at the end of the road. The opposite to Portage bay. No water for ships to sail on. I am doing what I can to lit up the dark though. Strings of lights in my maples guarding my gate. Light curtains from the roof of my front porch. Spotlights shooting up my dad’s ash tree down in the corner and the big pine next to the field.

There is one ship though! My grandfather’s old apple tree is lit up with spotlights and along the round wooden deck underneath sits a string of lights. Another string is attached to the rope tied around the stem at the crown of the tree and anchored in the ground some feet away in the lawn. That device actually looks like a backstay and in the summer I even connect a light piece of fabric to it, which makes you think of a sail.

It’s been snowing today. In the snow there is a lit up apple tree that in wintertime looks like a space ship. No, I don’t have any waters. And there are no ships sailing here. I might be able to arrange some singing though. On my space ship in the woods at the end of the road.

Missing Thanksgiving

It’s Thanksgiving and 4^th of July. The two days on the year when I miss Seattle and the US the most.

It might have been 1998, my second Thanksgiving in Seattle. Visiting with my family, living a hotel downtown life. My sons and their dad headed back to Sweden when dad was done with his work, and I stayed for another week or so to get my job for the Swedish National Radio done. This was the regular pattern for our shorter stays during a lot of years.

It was perfect. Family time with family friends added on with time for myself in the big city.

Only. My sons and their dad departing Seattle leaving me behind was the worst. I loved staying at what’s now Homewood Suites at Pike Street. I loved my downtown life. I loved doing my journalist freelance work. I loved the feeling of temporary freedom. But I hated the moment for separation from my family. I knew I would be fine in a day or two, but I just couldn’t bare them leaving me. Yet I chose to go through that, time after time.

So, 1998 (or was it -97?) they kissed me goodbye and headed back to Sweden on Thanksgiving. I was deserted. Downtown deserted. I cried. I cried my eyes out in my Homewood suite. This was my choice and I cried. Knowing that nice people would surround me in just a few hours didn’t help. I cried.

When it was time for it I crawled out of my self-inflicted misery, put some casual nice clothes on and made my face. I drove my rental through a quiet city and in a little while I was welcomed into a warm house by warm people. Close friends, friends, and friend’s friends. It was Thanksgiving.

My inside was still grieving. Knowing that Trouble 1 would be in pain on the long flight, his ears all clogged up. And maybe Trouble 2 was a little bit sad going back home without his mom. I don’t know how I was perceived that evening. Distracted. Uptight. Shy. Rude. Not quite there. Everyone was truly friendly and nice to me though, making me a part of their Thanksgiving spirit, which was still fairly new to me. The table was long and at my turn, saying the thanksgiving, made it a very special evening.

Late that night I drove back to my downtown home. I’ve never seen the usually 24-7 lit up Seattle skyline that dark. Understanding that most everyone at that time was sitting at a table somewhere surrounded by family or friends. And that some had a very lonely evening. You are never as lonely as when you know you are not supposed to be.

This year I am watching my playwright friend Elizabeth posting video clips on Facebook. Act 1 is already in the morning, someone starting preparing the food. The clips and different acts moves through the day at Grandma Betty’s house in the Catholic part of Capitol Hill where about 30 people from different generations are getting together.

Oh how I miss them. Oh how I miss all my Seattle friends on a day like this. I miss how they are loud and warm and crazy and witty and fun and smart and caring and… I miss them so it hurts. They are a part of me.

And I miss the little bit of American life that I once had. And wanted a lot more of. During those years when I was commuting between US and Sweden I often got the question: so where would you prefer living? A tricky one to answer. I remember responding that if I had to sell my place at the end of the road in my village to become a Seattleite, the choice would be very hard.

For many years though, I had the best of both worlds. But I always wished for more of Seattle. And that’s what I also always pictured. I can still hear myself driving my routes across University Bridge, Downtown, Arboretum, down to Lake Washington, Montlake Cut, Wallingford and U Village, saying out loud: someday I am going to live here! For real! Tanning in Gasworks Park, power walking around Greenlake, watching the sun set in the skyline from Kerry Park, strolling among the house boats in Portage Bay feeling it deep down in the core of my body: someday I am going to live here! For real! Just watch me!

In 2007 I took a first step for more Seattle life. Trouble & Trouble were 19 and 21, big boys already, and I felt that the stretches in Seattle could be extended. I bought a car! Yes I did! I would have my own car waiting for me whenever I landed in The Emerald City! And I invested in a storage unit for my Tempur Pedic mattress, my special Seattle clothes and other essential necessities, which until then had been dragged between tolerant friends basements. The storage even had a view of the new light rail! Yayy!

But life had different plans for me. And today I am thinking that I might have to find a way bringing back all my things to Sweden. It is not likely that I will be able to come back to Seattle. Even if I at some point could do the trip, I couldn’t do it by myself and I couldn’t stay by myself. If I am very lucky maybe my sons will go with me and visit if my body can do it. But a life in Seattle, as it once was and even more as I pictured it, longed for and wanted, no, my hopes for that is buried deep down in me.

So, hearing Elizabeth’s voice and laughter on her Thanksgiving morning makes me sad for myself. I know, it’s not a pretty feeling. But I love that laughter and miss it so much! And only hearing the North West Coast American English that happened to become my language is unlocking a piece of myself, (yes, go ahead and laugh my friends, I am aware of my accent and all my quirky slips, it is still one of my languages!). And I want to be in that language! I want to share 4^th of July with 30 000 people at Gasworks Park (yes friends, laugh on, I will still love it!) and I want to be a part of Thanksgiving, I want it to be one of my Holidays.

I have tried introducing the thanksgiving into one of my Swedish holiday traditions. Not the turkey, the stuffing or the pumpkin pie, but the thanksgiving. I am finding the ritual everyone around a holiday table expressing their gratitude one of the truly most beautiful. My efforts, so far, hasn’t been glorious. But maybe I just have to be persistent. Maybe I need to give it a few more years. If Maria won’t come to Thanksgiving, then Thanksgiving must come to Maria.