Dear Seattle,

I don't think we've been getting along lately. You're too gloomy. I can't deal with this deep dark dread that drenches everything in the mornings.

Really. At this point I am considering what it might be like to live somewhere else. Southern California, Scottsdale, Hawaii, even TEXAS at this point (hi jackie!). You think I'm kidding.

It wasn't raining when I went went out to my car this morning, a full hour and a half earlier than usual. I had a meeting down on Harbor Island, out where the ships drydock and refuel, where the train tracks have no flashing lights or barriers to keep you from barrelling into a cargo train. And I have to take 99 to get there and that always makes me nervous, because I don't drive that stretch very often. But it wasn't raining, and I was grateful for that.

Aurora was backed up. Tom Shane was on all the stations. I just wanted the day to be over with already. Then I was past the bridge, past Queen Anne hill, and heading up the ramp to the viaduct, which everyone says is going to collapse the minute the Big One hits.

But oh, the viaduct.

Right now the people in charge of you are bickering about how and when to replace the viaduct which, granted, is one of your uglier structures. It blocks the rich folks' waterfront view, it provides a dry spot for the poorer folks to hang out in this kind of weather, it's terribly close to the tourist waterfront activities and did I mention that it could potentially disintegrate at a moment's notice?

But as aesthetically dreadful, unstable and worrisome as it is, I don't know that any of your other highways provide such an amazing view.

When I was little I remember my aunt would take me for a weekend to stay at her apartment in Eastlake. We would go downtown and walk amidst the towering buildings. That was probably when it first occurred to me that you could be a fun place to live. I would get to see the big buildings, the lights, the Space Needle every day. Then my aunt moved to Magnolia, and driving to her house meant driving on the viaduct. It was always nighttime when she took me home with her. I would sit in the back seat, trying to get a glimpse of every brightly lit street hiding in between the skyscrapers, all going downhill to the waterfront.

I felt that way again this morning. It was still dark out, so the lit up skyscrapers really stood out. And since I was driving south, I could see the outline of the giant orange cranes at the port, the lights on the West Seattle bridge, the ferries slowly swimming across Elliott Bay. The tires made a rhythmic "harrumph! harrumph! harrumph!" as I drove over the seams in the highway and I thought to myself, "Seattle? You're not all bad."

When I moved into my dorm room at the University of Washington, I thought there would never come a day when I'd be able to find my way around you. I never thought I'd be brave enough to drive a car through your traffic- I still remember when my friends made me drive to the Spaghetti Factory. I had to take Denny Way and it was terrifying. I remember when I used to work on the waterfront, how I walked through the Pike Place Market every day whether I had money or not. I remember thinking that I even if I lived all around the world, I could always call you home.

That made itself very real to me a few years later, when I realized at the very last moment that I had no interest in moving to China- I had no interest in moving anywhere- because I loved you so much. I had you and Phillip and my little apartment and my six-month-old marriage and I had only started to feel that I belonged somewhere.

Harbor Island was pretty deserted when I got there fifteen minutes early for my meeting. I've never found the maritime industry terribly exciting, but this morning I felt proud to be a part of it, driving past the giant cargo ship in drydock, the cranes, sitting in the parking lot of a locally-owned tugboat company. I sat there till it was a good time to go inside. I parked facing north so I could see the buildings, the Space Needle, the viaduct, the traffic. I listened to a local band on the radio and it was warm and dry and peaceful.

I got lost on the way back to my office. I still don't have those exits memorized and I missed mine. I took the U-turn route on Aurora and got lost on Queen Anne, looking at all the houses. I wondered if we'd have enough money to buy a house on Queen Anne some day. I wonder where we'll live, because we won't fit in our townhouse forever. I wonder if we'll have to get a house on the Eastside, out on I-90 in Issaquah or on 405 near Newcastle, where the houses are new and huge and the schools are good and the yards are big and the commute downtown is wretched. Or maybe somewhere south of you, close to Phillip's parents and probably mine and that would be good, because houses are cheaper and grandparents are default babysitters. It never occurs to me thatwe might move further than the suburbs, to another city let alone another state. "What if Phillip gets a good job?" my mother-in-law asked me once, but that job would have to be... I don't know. The only job left.

I won't say "never" because you should never say never, but I really really don't want to leave you. Maybe it's silly, to be so attached to where you live, but I actually feel like the luckiest girl. Do you know how many American high school students are living on military bases overseas, resenting their parents for moving them away from their own country, from what's familiar? Do you know how many of them can't deal with the separation and the culture and the fact that everyone has to buy their clothes from the same base store? Or how many of them decide to be angry at everything and everyone for the entire two-year tour? I told myself I would never be like them. I worried I would never find a place to be from. And now? I have you.  I hate this weather, Seattle, but Scottsdale doesn't have a viaduct.

A lot of people hate the city. Traffic, crime, pollution, crowds. But I think of little Craftsman houses packed together on tree-lined streets. Neighborhood restaurants, coffee shops, Christmas decorations in the department stores, the water, the mountains, the hundreds of joggers and dogwalkers circling Green Lake on a Saturday afternoon. I would appreciate it, please, if you would snap out of this damp and colorless mess we're in right now, and go back to your bright and vigorous (and yes, occasionally wet) self. I miss you.

love,
maggie

Comments

[lee]

i also love seattle, though perhaps from a more intimate perspective. it's days like today where she is tough to love, cold and blustery.