The rain check

It’s a grey, dark and rainy Sunday here at the end of the road in my northern Swedish village, as well as in Seattle. Actually more like a moist drizzle here, and my guess is Seattle is the same.

I remember that day at the gym in Umeå back in winter 1993. The radio was on and there was a report about something in Seattle, probably the music scene. It caught my ear as we were only months from our first trip to that foreign territory I didn’t know anything about. And the reporter asked: it rains a lot in Seattle, how do you cope?

So it rains a lot in Seattle? Ouch. That’s not good news…

A few weeks ago the last brick-and-mortar umbrella store in Seattle closed. No one uses an umbrella in Seattle. If you happen to catch a human being in Seattle with an umbrella, it’s a visitor.  

And do you know in which city in the US the most sunglasses are purchased? Seattle. Jodell Egbert who's the owner of the last bumbershoot store Bella Umbrella in Pike Place Market will move her business to… New Orleans.

As a Seattle native Jodell Egbert should have known umbrellas wouldn’t be a successful business concept in Seattle. But she learned the dying art of umbrella making after she fell in love with a box of vintage ones she bought for her wedding 15 years ago. And she was persistent she would make Seattleites change their minds when laying eyes on her beautiful creations. How did that go? Not so good.

Because here is the thing. The rain is like blood in their veins to Seattleites. They don’t even notice it. Seattleites, Puget Sound, cedar and rain is like one big harmonies organism, only intruded ny traffic. I used to joke with my friends saying they were like poikilothermic animals. Didn’t do a big thing about the seasons, wearing pretty much the same clothes all year round and perceiving being wet as a natural state of mind. Unlike Swedes who live and breath their seasons. And shunning rain as something extremely uncomfortable. 

Umbrellas in Seattle are for wimps. Visitors. Tourists. To live your Seattle life without an umbrella is a regional pride. Or more correct, it’s something you don’t even consider. You don’t own one. They are only in the way. At your house and in your hand. Your hand is for the latte. 

During that first Seattle stay of mine in 1993, Swedish National Television wanted me to do a report about the fashion in Seattle. I looked around. Couldn’t find any fashion. Only grey and beige flanells over worn out jeans. I didn’t know then about Grunge. What about hair dos? Nope. Couldn’t see any. Just  hair. It’s very hard to maintain a hair do in the rain not protecting it with an umbrella. So, natural would be the look. Hair dos are for out-of-towners.

To the defense of the Seattle stance and reluctance when it comes to umbrellas you should know that the Seattle rain for the most part comes as a misty drizzle. Often continuing through the day. The typical rain originates from lower, flat stratus clouds and not from the dense, high cumulonimbus clouds associated with heavy precipitation. That’s why the misty nature of the raindrops. And for those drops umbrellas are an overkill, I have to agree.

By the way, the heavy rain flooding The Killing and the Grey’s Anatomy ER entrance is nothing but bad mouthing the Seattle weather! It’s very rare, I’ve only experienced that kind of rain once, an otherwise lovely december week in 1998. And yes, for that I used an umbrella!

So what’s with the sun glasses? Well, the only time I hear Seattleites complain about the weather is when the sun is out too many days in a row and the temperatures rise. When will we have som relief, they say, and reach for their shades. The summers after 2010 have all been dry and sunny with a dry streak record of 55 consecutive days 2017. It was the longest dry streak in more than six decades, so I am sure Seattle is enjoying the fall rains coming in.

But Jodell Egbert of Bella Umbrella in Pike Place Market has packed up her gorgeous hand made umbrellas for the more bumbershoot friendly New Orleans. “Every day somebody would come in and tell me it was stupid to have an umbrella store in Seattle because Seattleites don’t use umbrellas,” Egbert said. “It made me feel bad.” So, she gives Seattle a rain check until further notice.

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.