I Didn’t Stay

The Cloud Room isn’t the Cloud Room anymore—it’s painted a sort of forest-y green now and has a lot more furniture in it as a guest room than it did back when I lived here, what feels like ages ago. I’m staying at the Blue House for one of my Seattle nights but it just feels like staying with friends; it doesn’t feel like anywhere I used to call my own.

All of Seattle, so far, has felt a little like that. I got in yesterday from San Jose and my cousin came to pick me up and take me to his beautiful house in West Seattle. Apparently they’ve only had 78 minutes (or something) of summer this year, but the city put on a show for me and I put on my maxi dress and we walked the dogs to have deli sandwiches and Tim’s and I smiled to see all the Pacific Northwest things: evergreens, hydrangeas, organic pet food stores, sensible shoes, Cupcake Royale. My cousin and I talked until late at night and this morning, after a Morning Glory Chai at a dog-friendly café, he dropped me off in Ballard to see all the buddies here. BALLARD! The first thing I said was, “Oh man, they really did take down the Scandinavian Dennys! First the Sunset Bowl, and now this!”

Treasa and John—whom I hadn’t actually seen since I left five years ago, because they were in China the last time I stayed at this house—have a baby and Ian and Katie have a two-year-old and we all went to beautiful Fremont for lunch and to the market there, where I marveled at how cheap everything in The America is and bought some amusingly-patterned socks. Marcy had driven up from Olympia and I told everyone about the song and the gig and they told me about their kids and about their work and their houses. We sat around the living room and drank cold drinks and gossiped over some imported TimTams and chocolate fish—because that’s what I brought with me from New Zealand, exotically amusing foodstuffs—and then it was time to hug Marcy goodbye and to walk over to a local Mexican restaurant to meet up with some of the women I used to be in Book Club with, years and years ago. I had some more chocolate fish with me (and Pineapple Lumps!) and again, it was like I had just seen everyone a couple of weeks ago, although one particular person had written a book and had a baby since the last time I saw her. It’s light so late here, so we all walked home through beautiful Ballard and I made Katie stop while I took bad pictures of deep purple cosmos and huge yellow sunflowers. I kept Treasa up past her bedtime chatting in the living room over tea, talking about how everything has changed and changed and changed.

The rest of the week is looking to be booked solid with friends and family, before I go to Miami on Friday night (I’ve just learned, to my deep annoyance, that I will be missing a righteous birthday party that evening, among other things). It’s good to be here, to see everyone—but it’s a visit, this time. I’m a complete tourist, knocking off my various Seattle food goals, exclaiming at the sunset and the mountains and the Space Needle. I don’t belong here anymore.

And maybe it’s only now, so many years after I didn’t stay, that I can see with a bit more clarity that I didn’t ever quite belong here. I mean, I chose to come here for grad school, years and years ago, and I chose to live here for seven years: Wedgwood, North Seattle, Green Lake, Ballard. I had favorite places and favorite things—and definitely, indubitably, especially favorite people. I had a life here—a very good life here–and for a while all I wanted was to keep living it. I left thinking I would be back, that I would get another university job and another apartment, that I would do all the Seattle things indefinitely.

But walking around all the gorgeous refurbished Craftsmen houses, laughing and telling lies with old friends, cuddling the babies and eating the cupcakes, having a really lovely holiday, I see now that I couldn’t ever quite get a good fit. It’s so hard to describe why or how, because it was so right on paper, I was so close so often—the nearest I can get, weirdly, was walking along the sidewalk tonight after having said goodbye to Gael and Rob and their daughter, admiring all the front-yard gardens, full of gorgeous flowers that make me feel foreign. Not mine, not mine, I thought as I reached out to touch them, as we walked on by. Not mine, never mine.

It feels better, now, to come here for a visit, because I can just enjoy the flowers and the people and the artisan cane-sugar sodas without worrying about where I fit into it all. I just hadn’t realized, during all that time when I was sort of fine but nothing was quite right, that it would turn out this way, or that there was any other way at all. I didn’t know that I would find my very own city further down the track. I can just be here for the week, giving and getting lots of hugs and eating all the food everywhere, with no struggle and no regrets. I can come back whenever I want to, I think, now that I understood why I left, and now that’s finally okay that I didn’t stay.