Last week a business meeting took me all the way to Seattle, the city that I love and the city in which I was born. It's been over three years since I was last in Washington, so I tacked on a few days in order to spend it in my true hometown, Everett. My best friend, Molly, still lives there where she's married and raising her two adorable and precocious daughters, Anne and Aida.
There is something about the air there. It smells different. Maybe it's because you can get close to the water and smell the salt in the air. Or maybe it's all those pine trees and all that moss and all that rain. It's a verdant land, that Pacific Northwest.
After my visit with Molly, I headed to Seattle for a meeting with the folks from Big Picture Classes.
Lucky for me, that meant getting to hang out with Ali and Stacy and my new friend, Tracey.
We stopped at Ivar's on the Pier for a fish and chips snack.
We headed off to the Space Needle for a tasty dinner with a 360-degree very slowly rotating view.
We left Seattle to head over to Carnation where Stacy's parents live and held our meeting on Saturday morning before all boarding planes to our respective homes.
I always get a bit nostalgic when I'm home for any length of time. Though I wouldn't trade the path of my life for anything, I still wonder what it would be like to live in the town I'm from.
This is a picture of Silver Lake. I spent every summer there, trying in vain for that Washington tan, swimming in the lake, and probably doing a few things I ought to not have been doing. So many memories wash over me just looking at this Instagram shot.
A song came to mind, a song called "Hometown" by the insanely underrated Joe Jackson. If you're a fan, you'll know it. If not, here's a little taste of the lyric:
Hometown by Joe Jackson
Of all the stupid things I could have thought
This was the worst
I started to believe
That I was born at seventeen
And all the stupid things
The letters and the broken verse
Stayed hidden at the bottom of the drawer
They'd always been
And now I plough through piles
Of bills, receipts and credit cards
And tickets and the Daily News
And sometimes I just . . .
Wanna go back to my home town
Though I know it'll never be the same
Back to my home town
'Cause it's been so long
And I'm wondering if it's still there...
For anyone who somehow became separated from the place in which you grew up, it might resonate with you. In fact, sometimes this song breaks my heart in the best of ways.
Here's to where you're from.
