We love Seattle. We lived there for 21 years, raised both our sons there, and we love to visit them and our old friends. But there's a bittersweet element to these visits. As we get caught up with our old friends we hear news of lives changing, and because we only visit every 4 months or so, we hear a lot all at once. It can be overwhelming, and this time in particular it hit me with a strong wave of emotion. One old friend is now a grandmother, her teenage daughter - who my son used to babysit - is now a mother. Another old friend just got fired. A dear friend is reaching the end of a long and full life. Two long-married couples are going through painful divorces. One disowned a daughter after she came out of the closet. Another's life has become taken over by a religious obsession.
Wow.
At times during the trip I had to find quiet moments to just sit and take all these changes in. Some of these were friends who's lives seemed as solid as Mt. Rainier. The one who was fired seemed on the perfect career track; respected, admired, and happy. Some were friends who seemed to have it all; I would never have imagined a religious obsession overtaking what I thought was such a collected person with the perfect family and home. I would never have predicted any of these twists and turns in the lives of people I thought I knew so well. But, really, that says more about me and my perceptions than about them. That old saying, that you never know what goes on behind closed doors, that's what I found myself thinking. We show our friends the face we want them to see but everyone has other faces, the ones kept in the jar by the door.
I sat outside one day and just took a break, absorbing all the news I had heard. I listened to the wind humming through the trees. Seattle in the fall is so lovely; every tree is a rainbow of fluttering leaves, making a crunchy red, gold and orange carpet below your feet. The clouds are moving in and the rain is just starting. There's a bittersweet element in the air, of summer leaving and the long grey wet winter beginning, and it matched my bittersweet feelings perfectly.
And of course, all this news was a good reminder to me, to count my blessings and appreciate the good and bad in my own life. Seeing my two sons is what I thought about the most; each time I spend time with them I love them more and more. I am so proud of those two young men, but they also make me laugh and it is so merry being with them. And I reflect on how lucky my husband and I are to have them, and to still have each other to have and to hold, to hug and to laugh with, after all these years. Right before we left for Seattle we attended the wedding of a dear friend, who was a radiant and elegant bride. We were younger than my friend and her new husband when we married and there is no way I can impart-to them or to anyone-what a long strange trip our marriage had been. I wish I had the words to tell them, oh, how it's worth it.
I love my visits to Seattle but I am so happy to come back to the beautiful desert. This is the place I call home. I've lived in states on both U.S. coasts and in between, and in two other countries, and I could never have predicted that I would have ended up in this wild and beautiful land with giant saguaros and bobcats on my roof. And then it hit me: of course I couldn't have predicted the dramatic changes in my friends lives - I couldn't even predict my own! Life is what it is, this roller coaster ride. You get in and hang on. And if you can remember to enjoy the ride, it's a wonderful, wonderful thing.
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