Originally published 4/4/18
I've had an on-again off-again relationship with the West Coast most of my life. Born in Seattle but raised in South Carolina has afforded me the opportunity to visit the Pacific Northwest several times as a child, but has left warm Atlantic water and white sand between my toes and old, low mountains in my distance. That's where I feel at home, at the foothills of the Appalachians, appreciating the art of the buttermilk biscuit, speaking in tongues and drawls that make us sound less smart than we are, and navigating the complex Southern relationship between blacks and whites. I have appreciated the irony that the coffee I love migrated south from Seattle, as did the airplane manufacturer 40 years after we did. There is something about the South. Even the Seattleites can't resist it. So it was not without surprise that Isabel applied to the University of Puget Sound, a small, private liberal arts college founded in 1888 in Tacoma, Washington, just 30 minutes south of where I was born. I had never heard of it, nor did I encourage her to apply there. I wondered, does Isabel feel a genetic pull to the Pacific Northwest, with its new, tall mountains and climate so rainy that natives are surprised by a sunny day? I used to have a list of goals for my life, but found that life always surprised me, and so I gave up on listing things I thought I might do eventually. The surprises have been good, by the way, so I am not disappointed. But one thought was always in the back of my head: I need to take Isabel to Seattle. Her dad has taken her to England, Spain, Alaska and Disney World, and I've taken her to Litchfield Beach many times over. But something about the PNW (as they say there) has continued to draw me, and urged me to take her. Her admission to UPS (as they say there - which makes me think I'm getting a package) gave us the perfect excuse to boondoggle to Seattle over spring break this year. She has also been admitted to Sewanee and Elon, and is visiting those schools intensively to make her final decision about where to go. Her decision is complex to me, because Michael and I don't know where we'll be going either. Michael's graduating, too, you see, and is looking for a job. There have been opportunities in Kansas, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina so far. So we are leaving what Isabel considers home (Sewanee) and are going, well, somewhere. We likely won't know before she has to make her decision May 1. Also, though, our location has no bearing on her decision. Or does it? That's what I'm trying to discern right now too. Michael and I would like to be close to South Carolina to be near aging parents and Olivia, David and Jacob, Michael's adult children, all of whom live in Greenville still. I applaud Isabel for being brave and looking at the PNW to go to school. But, I know, from experience, it's a long way away from mom and dad. We left Seattle in 1969, just six weeks after I was born. My dad left 9 days after I was born, to start work at Milliken in South Carolina. My mom followed a few weeks later with me and my brother, who is 19 months older than me. We left my maternal grandparents, two aunts and their families and the community in which my mom had grown up and met and married my dad. We went back to Seattle a handful of times, sometimes in the summer to play in Grandma and Grandpa's garden, but most often at Christmas. I remember particularly the Christmases of 1980, 6th grade, and 1987, my freshman year of college. Grandma and Grandpa also drove south to see us, as did aunts and uncles, and cousins. So I've never not known my PNW family, I just haven't lived everyday life with them. The 1987 trip was my last. Until our visit just recently. All that remain in Seattle now are Aunt Betty, her son Dave and his wife Dawn, and their daughter Tiffany, and Dave's brother Steve. The ranks have thinned as the Rygg girls' families have grown and ventured away, just as we did. They now stretch from Minnesota to Seattle to San Diego to Temple, Tx, to South Carolina. Since 1999, we've been meeting somewhere in the middle every few years. As soon as Isabel and I got off the plane we drove to the home my parents left to come to South Carolina. On Facebook I jokingly called it my childhood home because I did live there for the first six weeks of it.
Left, 171st Street, Burien, Washington Ours is the house on the left, looking much like it did in 1969.
What you can't see from the picture, is the view from the other side of the house, which is a 180-degree view of Puget Sound, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean that defines much of what Seattle is: a series of ridges rising above the water, connected by bridges, and covered in houses teetering on the edges of short hills, all with a view of water. Some houses have been there for a long time, like ours, and some, like our new neighbor, are taking the place of traditional homes, built for views like this. Because, what you also can't see from here, but from the front of the house, to the southwest, is Mt. Rainier, which stands 14,411 feet above sea level. It is 60 miles away, but towers over this portion of the Sound, on a clear day. To put that in perspective, the mountain we live on, and love, called Monteagle Mountain, that people complain about driving to the top of, is 1,923 feet above sea level. The plateau upon which it sits is about 285 million years old, whereas Rainier is only about half a million years old. We're older, thus smaller.
I posted this picture on Facebook so my mom could see it, too. She cried when they left this house, and its view, she once told me. In our trips to Seattle over the years, we had never come out here. I can see why. It would be hard for me to see what I had left, too. Her comment was "Mixed feelings."
(I was not allowed to cry, for the record, when she and dad left 625 Spencer Circle, my actual childhood home in Spartanburg, after having lived there for 32 years. My mom and I stood in the empty den of that suburban red brick ranch after it was packed up, and as I started to tear up, she pointed her finger at me and said "Do not cry. We will not cry over a house. It is just a house. Now get out." I stifled my tears and we left.)
Back to our trip to Seattle. We stayed with my cousin Dave Olson and his family, who live in Redmond, a suburb northwest of Seattle where Microsoft is now headquartered. My grandparents lived in Redmond, where we visited them as kids in the 1970s and 80s. They lived in a retirement community full of small trailers and perfectly manicured postage stamp yards. As soon as we turned onto Avondale Road in Redmond to head to Dave's house, I recognized the street. Actually, it was more like I felt it. Thirty years later, I felt like we were going to Grandma and Grandpa's. Dawn confirmed my intuition later as we drove to dinner one night, and showed me the road where they lived, now flanked by condos, but the light fixtures remained.
We drove to Camano Island, where Aunt Betty, mom's sister and Dave's mom, lives. Even there, 90 minutes north of Seattle, Betty has a view of water and mountains. Seattle is flanked by the Cascade and Olympic mountain ranges, so where you look up there are mountains and wherever you look down, there is water.
The view from Betty's deck on Camano Island, right. The water is part of Puget Sound as well, called Possession Sound. Fresh water pours into the Sound as well, from inland rivers. Here we call that brackish. They don't.
We visited the University, which sits on a hill above the city of Tacoma, which is southeast of Seattle, at the bottom of Puget Sound. Gabled brick buildings nestled among towering evergreens punctuated the cold rainy day, a typical day in the PNW. The admissions director said people are actually disappointed if they visit on a sunny day. It was totally declasse and touristy to have an umbrella so I rejoiced in my decision to wear a raincoat with a hood. As much as you'd need it, an umbrella would be an inconvenience. That's how you spot a tourist. They have an umbrella.
Renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly is a native of Tacoma and took one year at UPS. They recently gave him an honorary degree, after which he donated a $600,000 wall sculpture for the new academic building. That's Isabel, on the left, at the bottom of the picture.
We spent a day in Seattle, and did the touristy things we didn't do when I was a kid. I don't think we ever went to the Space Needle when we were kids (though we did go to Nordstroms, which at the time, could not be found on the East Coast), so we went up in the Needle, and to the Chihuly museum and the science museum.
From the top of the Space Needle, right, which they are renovating for the first time since it was opened, in 1962.
We went to Pike Place Market and the original Starbucks, though we didn't do anything so gauche as catch a fish or order a coffee. Instead, as true Southerners (which I consider myself), we went to Biscuit Bitch. I just had to know what they thought a biscuit was. I told the sassy barista we were from Tennessee. She was complimentary of my hair.
I got the Spam Biscuit Bitch, left. The Hawaiian influence is strong in Seattle. Hawaiians love Spam. This also has eggs, cheese and gravy. The biscuit was a little more cake-y than I like, but I give it an 8.
Dawn and David took us up to Snoqualmie Falls, which is actually a hydroelectric plant for Puget Sound Energy that has provided power to the area since 1899. Now it's a tourist destination as well. I remember Uncle Russ, who worked for the energy company, took us there when we visited as kids.
The water falls 268 feet and powers two power plants, right. Twin Peaks was also filmed here. I never watched that show.
I know that a place doesn't define you, and that today, many of our places are the same, thanks to big box stores, chain restaurants, and architectural trends. But there is something both familiar and strange about the way Seattle feels to me. Its landscape is strange, with the towering mountains and ever present water, flanked by grey, pebbly beaches awash with driftwood. The sheer number of houses that climb each hill is overwhelming. It's a big city, so it has a football team that everyone cheers for, especially in recent years as they've had a good run. There wasn't so much discussion about the baseball team.
The beach at Alki Point, looking toward Seattle. Definitely not a South Carolina beach.
Some of the things that used to make Seattle different are either gone, or are also in Nashville, Greenville, or any city. The Bon Marche name is still on its building in downtown Seattle, but is dwarfed by the signage of the current occupant and owner, Macy's. We did go into the Seattle-based Nordstrom's, which occupies the former Frederick & Nelson building, where we used to buy Frango Mints - both of which were taken over by Marshall Fields, which was bought by Macy's, which, again, I can go to in Greenville, Nashville, or any other -ville in the US. And now there is a Nordstrom's near me, here in middle Tennessee, and a Starbucks always within reach.
What's familiar are the people. In Seattle, it's people I don't see much, at that. But somehow, the fact that they are family gives us an immediate intimacy that you don't experience with a stranger. Tiffany, Dawn and Dave's youngest daughter, was 9 years old at the last family reunion they came to in 1999, when I was pregnant with Isabel. We didn't exactly have an in-depth conversation then. This trip, we sat at the kitchen table and talked about the drudgery of work, the excitement of living abroad, the challenges of college debt and shared history of the family we are a part of. I had long discussions with Dawn, which we marveled at, after a lifetime of not having the opportunity to really talk, but to being able to talk so easily because of our shared family bonds. My cousin Steve came over for dinner, too, and we caught up on his kids, especially Tyler, who, while stationed in Charleston with the Air Force, came to our house for Thanksgiving once in Greenville. That's the kind of thing that being family lets you do. Check in once every 10 years or so. Or 20. Or 30.
Isabel fell in love with the PNW. That's why I wonder about her genetic code, and how ingrained seemingly exterior things like place are. My grandfather came to America from Norway because he was hungry, and sought a place of bounty; our family's obsession with food may be imprinted in our genes: we don't finish a meal but we're talking about the next one, and there's always more than enough to eat on the table. Laugh, but it's true. I don't have memories of Seattle, and Isabel didn't grow up going there as a kid, like I did. But she applied to this school that's in the heart of my native region.
Joseph's genetic code called him back to Bethlehem, literally.
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. Luke 2: 1-7
As we know, though, they had to leave soon after Jesus' birth. Not in search of a job, but to flee death.
An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” Matthew 2: 13-15
But then, they went back home, to Nazareth.
When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him. Luke 2: 39-40
The journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem was short, less than 10 miles maybe. But the flight to Egypt was about 140 miles just to the border, on foot, and then maybe another 150 miles to a safe city, mostly across desert. Historians think they could have walked 20 miles a day, but with a small child? That is a long, painful journey. And there wasn't a Starbucks at every exit, or even a hotel. In most places they likely had to depend on the kindness of strangers for food and a bed.
Spartanburg to Seattle is 2,777 miles, a 9-hour plane flight, assuming you make your connection with time to grab a Starbucks in the terminal. Flight attendants are generally a friendly bunch, and provide complimentary drinks and a snack.
The climate in Tacoma isn't that different from Sewanee, where Isabel also has an opportunity to attend school. Founded in 1858, it's 30 years older than UPS, and, as I said, our mountains are 257,500 years older than theirs. Expansion has historically been westward, I guess.
As our family continues to expand, could it be that Isabel goes West? Dawn has two other daughters, one in San Francisco and one in London, where they work and raise their families. My dad had to come to South Carolina to work. My grandfather had to leave Norway to come to the United States to eat. Joseph took his family to Egypt to avoid persecution.
I guess it could be worse.
Although I've never been a helicopter mom, and have, in fact, missed out on much of Isabel's life due to the divorce and the time she has been able to spend with her dad, I am a little hesitant to encourage her to flee the South, just yet. Though, as much as I try to schedule and control life, it (God) always surprises me.
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