Connecting Cross Country

My great uncle Neal and my great aunt Mary are two of my absolute favorite people on the planet.  Neal will be 98 on July 9 and Mary turned 92 last Christmas Eve.  They celebrated their 70^th anniversary on June 21^st.  Their secret to a long-lasting relationship according to her: two tubes of toothpaste, so one can squeeze from the top and one from the bottom without annoying the other.  Neal is an ornery rascal, the kind of guy who gives waitresses trouble, but they love it.  And Mary is steady and sweet.  He’ll tease her, and she’ll dish it back with a twinkle in her eye and a smirk on her lips.  Mary had her knee replaced back in the early spring.  She’s recovered beautifully and was talking for awhile about when she’d get the other knee replaced, but now she’s thinking she might not put Neal through that again.  He was doing the laundry for the first time.  Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?  They bought 2 new cars back in 2007, so they plan on being around awhile.  My uncle has always said he’d live to be 104, and he’s stubborn enough that he’ll probably make it.  Oh, and they Skype with their daughter back in the midwest.  And they still hold hands.  It’s mostly for stability when they walk, but it’s still ridiculously cute.  I really wish that everyone I know could meet them, but they wouldn’t like all the attention.

The happy couple 70 years ago on their wedding day.

Fifty years, shmifty years--try 70!

Now Uncle Neal and my grandma are brother and sister and they grew up on a farm in rural Denver, Illinois during the Great Depression.  Neither of them really talk much about those years because they were so difficult.  Neal was the only son in a family of daughters, so he had to work arduously and incessantly throughout his childhood.  I think he and I got along so well when I was a kid because he just acted like a big kid, and he never got to act like a kid when he was a kid.

But as the only son, he did get to go to college, so after working the farm for a few years after high school, he went to the University of Illinois (go Big Ten) to study agriculture.  It’s there that he met Mary.  She had grown up in Southern Illinois as the daughter of the town doctor.  She recalls her mom and dad tearing up the townspeople’s doctor’s bills because no one could afford to pay them.  Other times, they were paid in chickens and eggs and the like.  The story goes that when he proposed he asked if she wanted to ride in double harness with him.  Aunt Mary taught home economics for a couple years while Neal finished up school, and then when they got married, Neal started working for Campbell’s Soup.  He traveled the country buying vegetables from farmers that would be the carrots and corn and green beans in the soups.

When I lived in the midwest, I wouldn’t see them very often, but now that I live in Los Angeles, I see them every couple of months.  Right after I was born, they moved to Sun City West, Arizona, which is a community developed by Del Webb.  Basically, you have to be 55 or older to own property, so everyone here is older.  I’ve enjoyed coming here ever since I was little because if you’re younger than 40, you get a lot of attention and appreciation.  What’s great about this community is the number of activities they have for retired folks.  My aunt has become very involved in china painting and jewelry-making and needlecraft.  My uncle has served on the volunteer posse (who assist the police department) for over 30 years.  The meeting room in the posse building is named after him and he was just named the 2011 Citizen of the Year for Sun City West by the Chamber of Commerce.  And you should see how everyone reacts to them around town.  They end up teasing back and forth with Neal and are so endeared toward Mary.

Some of Mary's China painting

I try to get stories out of the two of them every time I visit.  This time, we were at a meal out somewhere, and we’d been talking about when they were first married.  Mary leans in (they do this adorable thing when they’re sitting next to each other where they lean their shoulders into each other and have a little side conversation), and all she says is, “Do you remember that hotel?”  And they both go off on this whole story.  They had just gotten married and Mary would travel with Neal on some of his vegetable-buying expeditions.  It was tomato season, so they were in southern Illinois for a few weeks, and the hotel they stayed only had rope ladders in the rooms in case of a fire, which terrified Mary, but thankfully they didn’t have to use them.  Mary even ended up working for the tomato bureau or some such organization.  Neal proceeded to tell a story of a very religious woman at the bureau and a feisty farmer who, knowing her leanings, would make sure to swear a blue streak every time he was around her, but for whatever reason, she really liked the guy.

And there were the two brother-farmers in North Dakota who took over the farm from their father and built a warehouse to store their onion crop.  But there was a defect in the warehouse and the onions were rotten, so they had to replace the crop somehow.  For every part of the country, Neal has a vegetable and a farmer and a story from that region.  Neal worked and traveled a LOT.  And  at first Mary would travel with him, but once their daughter Barbara was born, Mary stayed home and took care of her.  It wasn’t until this year that I realized that Mary was practically a single mother for a good bunch of the time.  But the thing is, she never even questioned it.  It’s not that she felt oppressed or wasn’t liberated.  In that day and age, you just did it.  You were committed.  You worked it out.  End of story.  During this visit, I asked Uncle Neal if he got along with his father.  He responded, “Well, I’ve never even thought about it.”

I learn so much from them every time I visit and wonder if there aren’t a few things that their generation may have gotten right.  Sometimes when I’m with them, I think my generation’s questioning and deconstructing of everything may have gotten us a certain level of self-realization, yes, but also lot of therapy bills and ungrateful discontent.  Life happens and you deal with it and move on.  Sometimes that sounds like rest and relief to my overcomplicating, overthinking tendencies.

But I did have a piece of self-awareness to offer my Aunt Mary.  She is one of the best conversationalists I know, and I told her so at dinner last night.  She asks wonderful questions that require thoughtful answers of more than just a few words.  And she’s really open to talking about anything.  Watching the news about New York last night, I asked her what she thought about gay marriage, and we had a great conversation about it.  Nothing is off limits.  And, people, she’s 92!  At the same time, she has that way of being corrective and diplomatic at the same time that “ladies” possess (and I never inherited).  I was still wearing my pajamas on Sunday morning (a t-shirt and shorts) and she looks at me and says, “You know, Ann, people don’t really wear shorts to church.”  But her tone wasn’t guilt-trippy or commanding.  She was just stating a fact.  I reassured her that I was changing.  I could use a little of that finesse.

This morning as I leave town, Neal and Mary are heading to a funeral of a member of their church.  My aunt and uncle are the only living charter (founding) members of their congregation.  They spend a lot of time going to funerals, between church and the posse and all their friends. If you live long enough, you outlast a lot of people.  So they are grateful for the time and abilities that they have.  They accept that some day their time will come, too.  But when it does, they will have left a beautiful legacy of love and service and a whole lot of great stories.

I found this image of lots of little coffee cups so endearing. 70 years of breakfast conversation.

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I don’t know why the previous two posts are now displaying out of order on the home page.  Suggestions?

After getting an oil change in SLC (I’ve already gone 3000 miles!) and learning that the amount of tread on one of my tires would not pass inspection in the state of Utah (awesome), I headed south rather timidly to St. George, Utah.

In my attempt to think less and stop more, I got off the freeway, heading toward “Lake Shore” thinking I would end up on the edge of the Great Salt Lake–very exciting!  Turns out I was too far south (south of Provo) and the lake was actually Utah Lake, and Lake Shore is the name of a small town in that neck of the woods.  But the scenery afforded some lovely moments, accentuated by the fact that it smelled like farm.

Lil' Blue posing with its fancy new car wash--and proof that I actually got out of the car!

As I traveled south, the rocks got redder and their formations were more spectacular, even martian.  This was the territory of Zion National Park, and holy Moses, was it impressive!  I had to stop again.

Browse you say? Why, thank you, I think I shall. It's a sign.

By the time I arrived in St. George, my friend Annie had just gotten out of rehearsal.  Annie is a friend from Los Angeles.  When we met, we discovered not only that we practically had the same name, but that we went to the same school for undergrad and even lived about a block away from each other one year, though we didn’t meet until Los Angeles.  We have become fast, close friends, though.  She did all these thoughtful things for me on my birthday last year, and this year on my birthday, she’s getting married!  She is in St. George for the summer performing at the Tuacahn amphitheater in Grease and The Little Mermaid as Frenchie and one of the sister mermaids, respectively.  I know Annie can sing, but I’ve never seen her on stage, so I was thrilled to see her play Frenchie (the beauty school dropout, a role she’s done several times) that night.

Annie had to save her voice for the performance, and she’s been battling having a weak voice, so I talked about the trip as she went about making dinner and her 2 dogs, Buster and Bowie, played at my feet.  This is the first currently-in-my-life friend I’ve seen on the trip, so it was a different dynamic, catching up on the most recent happenings and the ins and outs of daily life in a new situation rather than rehashing decades of history.  Soon it was time to head to the theater with roommate Bridey, who plays Jan, and neighbor/castmate Kami, who plays Marty, and is taking a short stint off the show to get married this weekend.  I felt like a real insider riding in with the leading ladies!  It was like I was new girl Sandy, and the Pink Ladies were welcoming me into their crew.

I’ve never seen a theater like this one–maybe Red Rocks is similar?  The stage was set outdoors against red cliffs under a star-lit sky.

Tuacahn stage

The backdrop for every Tuacahn performance

They had many period cars zooming around the stage throughout the show, which added an element of excitement and fun (though one of the cars leaked antifreeze and started smoking during a previous performance).  Now, Utah knows how to do heat.  And it is a dry heat, which does help, but it was still 90 degrees at intermission at 10pm. I was longing for the frozen wash cloths my mom used to pack when we would see musicals at The Muny in St. Louis.

Annie was perfect as Frenchie–she isn’t that different in real life from her character: loves pink, sweetly befriends people, tries to be a peacemaker.  But unlike Frenchie, Annie knows what she wants to do–be on stage performing–and she’s phenomenal at it.  After the performance, the cast is available for a meet and greet, and it was fun to watch as young and old alike went up to Annie and only Annie, she had so endeared them toward Frenchie with her performance.

Apparently, the author of “Who Moved my Cheese?” was present that evening with his publicist and two sons.  The elder son Emerson, a video game animator in San Diego, took this photo of us girls (I got to wear the Pink Ladies jacket!).

The Pink Ladies: Annie, Kami, and Bridey, aka Frenchie, Marty, and Jan

It was a late night, and so I got a late start the next day.  Plus it was really hard to leave, which is funny because I know I’ll see Annie again sooner than most of the other friends I’ve seen.  But Annie is the type of friend that feels like she’s been in my life forever, even though we’ve only known each other a short time.

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Currently, I don’t much remember the drive from Missoula.  I’ll have to look back at my pictures.  I met up with college friend Amelia in Salt Lake City, after getting sufficiently confused by the gridding system the city has in place.  I went to E 100 S rather than S 100 E.  Like really, Salt Lake City?  Amelia lives in the much less confusing Sugarhouse neighborhood which very much has a neighborhood feel with blocks upon blocks of darling homes.  We enjoyed a thoroughly leisurely day together, letting one moment flow into the next, which is a pretty probable M.O. for both of us.  When I arrived, 5 month old Jane was napping, so Amelia and I caught up on the basics.  We became friends in college and had a joint graduation party in December when there were piles of snow on the ground.  Amelia studied education, but not long after graduating, decided to go back to school for nursing, which she did in West Michigan, eventually landing in New York, which is where we last saw each other.  While in New York, she lived with another friend of ours from college, navigated big city life, and met her now husband, Pete.  It was a promising job prospect for him at a new company that moved them to SLC 2 1/2 years ago.  She continues to be a nurse at an oncology outpatient clinic 3 days a week and stays home with Jane the other days of the week.

Speaking of Jane, when she woke up and my heart had sufficiently melted, we ventured out for a walk in the neighborhood.  Seriously, I dare you not to melt!  Try it!

Sweet Baby Jane

Are you still with me?  What blew me away as we walked down the street was how Amelia could name and tell me details about each of her neighbors.  It was incredible!  Apparently, one of the neighbors made a chart for their entire block, and Amelia and Pete have it prominently placed on the refrigerator.  I have not heard of such an intentional choice to be neighborly in a long time.  How lovely.

Amelia and Pete's neighbor chart

And as we ventured beyond her street, Amelia often sprinkled her stories with the names of a solid and wide circle of friends.    She is a part of a book group, which is really more about visiting than about discussing the book (is there another format to a book group?).  It seems as though in their time in SLC, Amelia and Pete have rooted themselves in some good community.

We arrived at wandered through a lovely bookstore, The King’s English, and meandered back home.  It was so pleasant to not have to rush anywhere.  Since I’d never met Pete and Amelia hadn’t seen his new office, we went to visit him at work.  Pete showed off Jane and introduced Amelia, who introduced me and proceeded to tell every single person about my road trip.  It was really sweet.  The office sits on a hill on the east side of SLC and looks out across the entire valley toward the mountains on the other side.  This city is gorgeous.  Pete had to get to a meeting, so we didn’t get a lot of time together.  I’ll just have to come back for another visit!

I’ve always felt close to Amelia, understood by her, appreciated her radiant smile and contagious laugh.  And now she does that cute baby-talking mom-voice.  As our time together came to a close, Jane played and cooed on a blanket and this friend-turned-mom seemed to be really content, at home in her life.  And it was a thing of beauty.

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I’m currently feeling a little rebellious….I’m secretly using my great aunt and uncle’s internet when they specifically asked me not to.  I unplugged the cable from their computer and plugged it into my laptop.  I tried to explain to my uncle that it would be fine, but the man will be 98 years old in a couple weeks, so he was more than a little hesitant.  But seriously, my aunt and uncle are both in their 90’s, and they actually have high-speed internet.  And they Skype.  And they celebrated their 70th anniversary on June 21st.  I could write an entry about them every day (and they will get their own entry in a couple days).  They are some of my favorite people on the planet.

Back to Salt Lake City with some other favorite people, though.  I did remember that on the drive from Missoula to SLC, the border of Idaho and Montana was the highest point I’d reached up until then (I’m a little obsessed with the altitude reading on my GPS).

I stayed with friends Jason and Amy in Salt Lake.  When I arrived into town, they made a late dinner.  We actually played around a little bit testing our food sensitivities.  I did food sensitivity testing back in February with Heewon An of Healthee Life.  I learned what foods worked well with my body and which didn’t based on a strength test she performed.  I radically changed my diet (have had minimal dairy and sugar/honey/molasses/anything besides fruit that’s sweet in the past few months), have had more kale this year than in my entire life, and by rocking it out with the middle=aged ladies at Curves, have lost over 20 pounds.  And let me tell you, Facebook was actually a really helpful tool in the process.  When I got home for the testing, I initially posted: “Goodbye cheese.  It was nice knowing you,” to which the first comment was hilarious:”Oh no!  Why are you breaking up with cheese?!”  A friend who lives in Ottawa, Canada sent a profoundly encouraging Facebook message when I was in the throes of establishing these new habits.  Other friends posted links on my wall.  I had never anticipated using Facebook in that way.

But enough of my health kick interlude.  Back to Jason and Amy.  Jason is pretty much like a little brother to me, and Amy is his spectacularly stellar wife.  Jason and I met through friends in Los Angeles, and I coached him through the Strengthsfinder assessment, which I’d been trained to use in grad school.  His life was pretty chaotic and unkempt at that point, but over the next several months I watched him become more steady and stable and get integrated into a group of friends.  He and another friend helped me with a short film project I was doing, which involved coming home with me for three days and filming my family.  During one scene which was shot at our kitchen table, Jason stood with a boom microphone (a microphone on the end of a long stick) raised above his head for 45 minutes straight.  He is a faithful and dedicated friend.

I was suspicious and protective when I first heard about Amy, but within a few moments of knowing her, my fears were assuaged.  She is brilliant (getting a Ph.D. at the University of Utah), organized (a good complement to Jason’s tendencies), genuinely friendly and so easy to be around, and caring and generous beyond compare.  She also has a great circle of friends, which testifies to Amy’s character.  I had the honor of meeting several of these friends at the wedding, some of whom I will actually be visiting on this trip.

Jason and Amy

I haven’t seen them since their wedding a year-and-a-half ago, and so I got to see their home in SLC, which so quickly became my home because of their hospitality.  We turned in pretty quickly that first night, but the next evening, we spent a couple of hours at a water park.  I don’t think I’ve laughed and squealed and screamed like that in a long time.  It would never have been something I would have come up with to do, but it was just so much fun.  Definitely different from being cooped up in a car.  And we climbed over 1000 steps to get to the top of all those slides.  After the water park, we grabbed some Thai food downtown at Thai Lotus near City Hall and the Library and then drove around the city to see Temple Square and the capitol building.  The next morning we grabbed a cup of Kona coffee at Bad Ass Coffee Company and talked about work and life and figuring it all out.  We’ve had many conversations like that before, and I know that we’ll be in each other’s lives until we figure it out.

Some pictures of downtown Salt Lake City:

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Blarg!  In the process of breaking up my previous post into two more manageable chunks, I accidentally deleted what I had written about Danielle.  To have one snaffoo like that thus far isn’t too bad, though, I suppose.  So here’s Take 2:

So I drove from Seattle to Missoula, Montana on Day 8 of my cross-country adventure.  I had done this drive in the opposite direction with Susan when we moved her out to Seattle.  Most of it was in the dark.  And snow.  Coming down the side of the Rockies with all of her earthly possessions in tow.  And who was driving. Oh, that would be me.  Awesome.  Needless to say, this was a much less stressful journey in the daylight. I got to enjoy the cloud-covered, snow-tipped peaks of the Cascades as I weaved through its canyons.  More than one waterfall seemed to be coming straight out of the rock.  Eastern Washington turns into rolling agricultural hills, then the northern tip of Idaho and the western edge of Montana show off with the Rockies.  I stopped for lunch in Spokane at a charming French cafe called Madeleine’s and became enamored with the architecture of the downtown area.  I didn’t explore much (this was before my stop-and-enjoy resolution), but I had parked right next to the spot where the Salvation Army was started in Spokane.  Both my mom and her mom before her were heavily involved in the Women’s Auxiliary of the Salvation Army in St. Louis.  It’s funny, it felt like I was surrounded by reminders of the people in my life on this particular day.  Passing exits with street names of friends or friend’s companies.  Passing a semi from a trucking company with the same name as my hairdresser in LA.

By the time I got to Missoula, dusk was falling on the second longest day of the year.  My friend wasn’t home, so I camped out in her back yard for some welcome down time, then went to explore the University of Montana campus.  We eventually got in touch and reunited (she had been trying to locate the cat she was cat-sitting before the owners got home that night–oops!).  Danielle and I worked at a camp together in the upper peninsula of Michigan for in the summer of 2002.  That’s 3 months’ time 9 years ago.  But I tell you, thus far, Danielle has expressed some of the most enthusiasm and excitement about seeing me (perhaps it was easier to detect because we communicated more by phone than by email)–and it’s completely mutual!

I remember her as fun and spunky and easy to talk to.  The camp we worked at was a training center for college students; Danielle worked in the kitchen (with longer and more extreme hours) and I worked in the office and managed the camp store.  At that time, she was studying to be a veterinary technician and often expressed her love for animals.  She wanted to work with horses, but most of the work was with people’s pets.  She was also a faithful and patient friend to some pretty complicated people.  She knew even then as an undergrad how to see underneath what people were saying to what they really needed to hear.  And she genuinely expressed it from her heart.

Now, Danielle is a vet tech at an orthopedic clinic and an emergency clinic.  And she house/pet-sits.  And she does photography (she moved to Missoula to study at a photography school).  So she’s busy.  But at the end of her long day of work and cat-chasing and my long day of driving, we grabbed dinner and a local microbrew (Bayern’s Dumptruck Summer Ale), caught up on all the news (like her engagement!), and then she took me on a hike.  It was a perfect plan after a long day in the car.  As the sun set over the mountains and deer trotted by, Danielle told me she’d recently gotten a horse.  I literally threw my hands up in the air and started shouting when I heard.  It was a real bona-fide dream come true!  So thrilling!

Danielle wanted to do a mini photo-shoot of me on our hike, so here is one of her shots:

Taking it all in.

We went back into town to stop at the local ice cream spot, Big Dipper ice cream, which sported flavors like cardamom and red tea chocolate chip.  I thought, “I could see myself spending summers in Montana.”  Apparently Missoulians hate Californians who use their quaint town as a summer retreat.  Oops.

Danielle and me with our unique flavors from Big Dipper.

Over and over again, Danielle expressed that she wished I could stay longer because she would show me this and that.  I ended up staying 3 1/2 hours after I thought I would leave the next morning because I was so enjoying our time together and didn’t want it to end.

One last photo shoot before I left:

This is Danielle's very large cat.

Home on the range

Who knew that 3 months at summer camp could form a bond like that?

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I made it from Los Angeles to Seattle in Week 1, saw 17 friends, logged a lot of miles, and am so thoroughly thrilled that I am doing this trip.  Most people ask me if I’m driving by myself, and I often respond that, with all the socialization I’m doing, the down time in the car to reflect is not only necessary, but welcome.

Some of the themes I noticed in my conversations this first week are: work/life balance, finding a niche both in career and in social community, and discovering hobbies.  Overall, people have been receptive to the Facebook road trip idea and to getting together.  I’m surprised how easy it is to sit back down with these people after various lengths of time and different levels of closeness.  And I love the interplay of the personalities I remember and the personalities my friends have now.  They are simultaneously similar to and different from the people in my memory, but in nearly every case, each person seems more himself or herself.  I am truly fascinated by this phenomenon.

I’ve also had a good deal of personal reflection.  My current struggle is how quickly or slowly to go, both from day to day and even within the days.  I had a forced day of down time on Sunday, since Susan had a wedding and Dirk and Alicia weren’t available until evening.  And I needed it so badly.  I am still emailing and notifying people that I’m even doing the trip, and until that’s completed, I probably won’t get a much-desired break from the computer–some of the downfalls of flying by the seat of my pants.  There is always stuff to do.  Heh–sounds like life, right?  And on these beautiful drives, I end up taking pictures as I’m flying by scenery at 80 mph rather than pulling off the road, getting out of the car, stretching my legs, breathing the air, and capturing the moment.  Why do I do that?  I feel the pressure of getting to my destination, seeing the people, making good time, winning against some unknown road-trip time-keeper.  How dumb is that?  My friends wouldn’t care if I were 10 or 20 minutes later.  There is no game to win or lose.  Most people who know me can attest that I am a procrastinator.  Why, in this context, am I so anxious to get things done?

I also think a lot, can you tell?  A friend told me before I left, “You’re going to have a lot of time with the voices in your head.” Perhaps a goal for the next week should be to stop and observe and enjoy more and think less.

Finally, I’ve realized that I am by no means and in no way doing this alone.  This trip would be anti-fun if there weren’t people on the other end willing to accept a visit.  I couldn’t do it without the phone calls on the road, the shout-outs on Facebook, knowing people are clicking on links and reading this blog, and that’s outside of the visits, meals, beds in spare rooms and air mattresses of the people I’m actually visiting.  This is truly an experiment in community, and I am privileged to be on this adventure with all of you.

Here are some of my 80 mph pics:

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As I mentioned earlier, my high school friend Susan works at the Woodland Park Zoo.  She knows more about birds than anyone I’ve ever met.  I can literally point up in the sky, and she can tell me what species is flying overhead.  I have done this is several different parts of the country.  And if she doesn’t know, she has a book she looks it up in.  This is her in action doing the raptor show:

Susan and a turkey vulture

The spectacled owl

Barn owl

And she cleans up well, too!  She had a friend’s wedding to go to on Sunday and looked like this:

Susan all dressed up for a friend's wedding.

Now Susan and I have spent a lot of time together over the past couple years, considering we live so far apart.  I helped her drive cross-country when she moved to Seattle.  We traveled together to a friend’s wedding and to a reunion weekend.  We’ve talked on the phone pretty frequently.  It was such a comfort and a relief to know that at the end of this first week, I would end up with Susan.  That I could just show up on her doorstep at any time of day or night and have a home.  At this point, she and I have known each other almost 20 years (ouch), and so we are familiar with each other’s quirks.  I even told her, “I don’t even know what to write about you, Sus.”  She’s someone that I can just “be” with.  On Saturday night we went out to eat and came home and watched a movie with some popcorn–honestly not much different than what we would do in 7th grade–but it doesn’t matter.  What matters is just being together, getting to process our days, doing the dancing exchange of knowing each other and being known.  Susan is a true lifelong friend who I can count on through thick and thin, who will tell me like it is, who I can philosophize about the meaning of life or be silly with.  She is patient with my shortcomings and quick to point out my strengths.  I think that’s what they call love.

Even though Susan and I didn’t see each other a ton over the weekend, she was understanding enough for me to visit with some friends from my early days in Ann Arbor, Dirk and Alicia.  When I was a freshman at Michigan, Dirk and another woman, Wendy, would sit at a coffee shop (Cava Java on South U. for those who know) once a week for a few hours.  I was usually the only student who would show up, and in the chaos of freshman year, figuring out who I wanted to be and how to survive my first year of college, they were a steady, calming presence.  Dirk and Alicia mentored me through that time.  They valued what I had to say and treated me like an equal (even though Dirk had a PhD and Alicia was getting hers).  We all sang in a choir and played music together.  They got engaged and married.  I remember how humble and intellectual and passionate and fun they were.  Then Alicia was offered a professorship at the University of Washington, and they moved to Seattle.  The last time I saw Alicia was about 7 years ago, which we figured out because she was pregnant at that time and their son Rohan is now 7 years old.  At that time, Dirk was working an entry level position at a construction materials salvage company, Second Use.  Now he is part owner of that company.  Basically, they sell home-building materials that are acquired from unused materials from construction sites or from demolition sites and the like.  But what Dirk, who is a classic engineer in many ways, loves most about the work is the stories.  The stories of where the materials come from and where they end up.  The stories of the families on either end.  They themselves have trim in their kitchen from the Seattle Opera House!  Meanwhile, Alicia has taught and researched in the field of linguistics at UW.  And they have raised and amazingly intelligent, talented, and creative son.  There were several moments throughout the evening when I felt this kindred resonance with them.  I wish I could better put words to it–it wasn’t quite nostalgia, but it was more than a warming of my heart: an excitement at talking about ideas in a way that I only did in Ann Arbor, an empathy about walking through some painful experiences, and a mutual understanding of the community and culture we came from.  I was reminded of how sweet that time in Ann Arbor was with that group of friends and of how I will always consider them some of my kindred spirit peeps because of it.

I ended up staying around an extra day in Seattle in order to see Dirk and Alicia and meet Rohan, but it was so worth it!  As a result, I had a quiet day to catch up on emails and blogging and planning (of which there seems to be an endless supply for this project).

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Another beautiful drive north (I know it sounds redundant, but it’s true!) through Oregon.  One of my big debates this week was whether to stop in Portland and for how long.  I’ve never been, and I’ve heard amazing things about the city.  I ended up having a long lunch break for a couple hours at a little cafe (J Cafe, I think?) near the convention center.  Not an ideal way to see the city, but I did observe my fair share of piercings and tatoos and funky personalities.

By the time I got into Seattle, it was after dinner and Terri, a friend from LA, picked me up and we went for drinks.  The previous time I had been in Seattle was about a year and a half earlier, and I had seen Terri then, as well, so she and I have had one of the shorter spans of time since we last saw each other.  So our conversation was different from a lot of the others I’ve had.  Actually, I’ve been surprised by how different each conversation is.  I thought I would get tired of saying the same thing over and over again, and I am explaining the same events of my life repeatedly, but each context with each person is so unique, that it hasn’t gotten repetitive.  So Terri and I glossed over a lot of the catch-up conversations quickly and got into a deeper conversation about the difficulty of finding your place in a big city, of finding community, of finding a date. Terri used to live in the neighborhood where we were hanging out, Capitol Hill, so it was fun to view the neighborhood in a local way.  We grabbed drinks at Bleu Bistro then walked back to the car past the “Mystery Coke Machine,” which Terri and her friends dubbed MCM.  In addition to the regular Coke, Diet Coke, and Mt. Dew buttons, there are two “Mystery” buttons that spit out different kinds of soda–you never know what you’re going to get.  First you tell the machine what kind of soda you want, you put your money in, and see what comes out!  We got a can of Squirt and a can of 7up.  Not too eventful, but fun nonetheless.

The Mystery Coke Machine has two "Mystery" buttons that spit out surprise beverages.

Terri tells the Mystery Coke Machine what kind of soda she wants: grape or orange.

Then you put your money in.

It costs 75 cents to have this much fun!

So it wasn't grape or orange--we got Squirt and a can of 7up.

Then Terri took me to the top of Queen Anne hill for a beautiful night view of the city.  I didn’t know my camera could take such great night shots:

Terri and I at the top of Queen Anne hill.

It was a great night with Terri seeing a few Seattle treasures.

The next morning, I discovered Fresh Flours bakery and coffee shop very close to the Woodland Park Zoo and my friend Susan’s apartment.  I camped out there enjoying their Blood Orange Hibiscus tea and wifi for a good chunk of the weekend.  I had gotten in touch with high school color guard (the flags that perform with the marching band) member Ivy and we decided to go see high school friend Susan (and my host for the weekend) at the Woodland Park Zoo.  Susan is a zookeeper in the raptor program, so twice daily she does a show featuring the birds of prey in flight around a grassy arena.  Ivy was excited to attend the show, so we braved the cold and rain (really, Seattle, you couldn’t be more creative than that?) to watch falcons and hawks and vultures and owls.  Ivy works at Microsoft, who employs a whopping 50,000 people in Seattle, working on their new cloud system.  It was interesting to see Ivy in such a technical field because what I knew and remembered of her was quite creative. She pulls long, hard hours at her job and is considering a transition in the not-too-distant future.  So we had a relaxing (albeit chilly and wet) walk around the zoo, which is quite a lovely facility.  Susan gave us a behind the scenes tour of the raptor program.  Many of the animals were hiding out from the rain, but we did see a lion.  We also learned, thanks to some feisty high school volunteers, that hyenas are descended from cats and wild dogs are (obviously) descended from dogs, but that hyenas and wild dogs are NOT related.  Who knew?

Ivy and me after our trip to the Woodland Park Zoo.

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I began the morning in Albany (adjacent to Berkeley) having stayed with Kevin and Nikki the night before.  The gas station on the corner had a 2-cent drop in gas prices!  That was a treat.

I was excited for the drive ahead because I was venturing into new territory.  Except for a trip to Seattle in 2009, I have never been north of Napa Valley.  I could not believe the beauty around me on this leg of the trip.  California is so diverse and so beautiful.  There are mountains still packed with snow in the middle of June.  A week ago, I could have gone to the beach!  I made my way to Redding to locate my friend Phillip, who is in school there.  He let me know as I was on the way that he was actually back in Los Angeles for the summer, so we caught up with a quick phone conversation as I drove around Lake Shasta.  That part of the world feels like Switzerland, and Lake Shasta looks like an alpine lake.  As I wove around the lake (and in and out of phone reception), Phillip shared with me his ventures integrating spirituality and creativity.  Phillip is a talented performer–a spoken word poet and professional dancer–who has graced the stages of Broadway and So You Think You Can Dance.  Currently, he is also in the midst of a ministry program.  We didn’t have much time to connect, but I was reminded that Phillip is a wonderful integration of a dreamer and a doer.

During my stop in Redding, I saw Mt. Shasta in the distance, and as I drove north, it got closer and closer and the view got better and better.  I was stunned!  At some point during the drive, I was on the phone with my 91-year-old grandma, and I ended up giving her a play-by-play of everything that was going on around me.  There was a long, low, agricultural valley that led right up to the base of Mt. Shasta.  I entered Oregon for the first time.  I passed the highest point on Interstate-5 (at 4310 feet above sea level).  It was a pretty eventful few minutes!  And I was grateful to share it verbally with grandma, even if she couldn’t see the beauty that I was seeing.

Mt. Shasta from Redding, CA

Mt. Shasta up close

Eventually, I landed in Eugene, Oregon, home of the University of Oregon, and my youngest cousin Sarah and her boyfriend Jordon.  For the most part, we have become a weddings and funerals family.  So the last time that I saw Sarah was at our oldest cousin Nancy’s wedding.  It was a week after that event that she and her boyfriend moved across the country to Eugene for Jordon to go to law school.  Now Jordon has passed the bar and is clerking for a judge and Sarah is going back to school to be a science educator.  Now, I remember when Sarah was born, so she’s always had a special place in my heart, probably accentuated by the fact that I never had younger siblings.  Since she moved to Eugene, she has done a variety of outdoor educating, which suits her absolutely perfectly.  I never could have predicted it would be where she’d land, but now I can’t imagine her doing anything else.

We swapped a few stories about our Grandma who was 95 the year Sarah turned 16 and her older brother turned 21 (their birthdays are 9 days apart).  Grandma called Sarah on her brother John’s birthday to wish Sarah a Happy 21st Birthday.  Right age.  Right day.  Wrong kid.  But Sarah went with it and Grandma said, “You’ll have to come over so I can make you one of my whiskey sours!”  I never knew Grandma was a 95-year-old bartender, though whiskey sours were her favorite drink.  It was a cute memory I hadn’t heard before.

When I arrived, I was feeling quite overwhelmed and behind, but Sarah was steady and easygoing.  A night of sleep helped, and the next morning, she and I got breakfast.  She shared with me a loss that she and Jordon had experienced recently, and I was struck by how common, how foreign, and how life-altering loss can be. Then she showed me around campus.  I love college campuses and the environment of college life.  Before long, it was time to get on the road and head to Seattle.  Sarah is so special and so dear to me, and I am grateful that I got this time with her.

Sarah and me touring the University of Oregon

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After lunch with Omar, I got to cross the Bay Bridge, which is such an amazing structure!  What an experience driving across the bay with the buildings of downtown San Francisco rising up against the swooping cables of the bridge.

The Bay Bridge from below.

Janise (like Janice, just with an “s”), my best friend in high school, lives in a great neighborhood adjacent to the Giants baseball stadium.  She’s a new mom of 7 weeks, and I met her and daughter Sophia while they were taking a walk and we went to grab a cup of coffee, forgoing Starbucks for a local joint: The Creamery.  Sophia slept while Janise and I caught up on the past several years.  She and I were inseparable in high school.  People said our names in tandem so frequently that they often laughed at how often they also said “Anise and Jan” or “Jan and Anise.”  We would spend the entire day at school together and go home and talk on the phone for an hour or more each night.  When we got our driver’s licenses, we would go for drives and talk or go spy on the houses of boys we (I) liked.  Janise was an amazing flute player, and we were drum majors of the marching band together for 2 years.  But recently, save for a call on her birthday, Janise and I didn’t talk much.  When she called the morning I was in the Bay Area to tell me she was free, her voice on my voicemail brought tears to my eyes.

And there were more tears as I shared some the hard things I’ve gone through in the past few years, of which she was unaware.  Poor thing, it was like I hit her over the head with a baseball bat.  But she and I looked into each other’s tear-filled eyes with a look of knowing and understanding that only a long, deep friendship can afford.  And we laughed, too.  I think we both learned how to throw our heads back and really laugh with each other.  When Sophia started to stir, that brought our time together to a close.

Janise and Sophia and me outside The Creamery.

Janise's daughter Sophia slept quietly, then she looked like this.

I headed back across the bay for dinner in Albany with friends from grad school: Kevin and Nikki and Dave and Sarah.  I was a little late because I was trying to blog at a nearby library.  I am struggling to find a rhythm of driving and socializing and updating.  Nikki had made an amazing dinner of sugar snap pea soup, quinoa and sun-dried tomatoes, and pasta salad.  It’s been 4 years since I saw Kevin and Nikki and Dave (I just met Sarah that night), when they all traipsed up to the Bay Area to work together.  It was fun to dream and brainstorm together again and hear the results of the dreaming and brainstorming we did together a few years back–the ways that they’ve followed what they learned, the ways that they broke out and made their own way.  On top of that, it was a healing time for me.  I had a hard time in grad school, which really wasn’t a mystery to anyone in my program.  The academics were fine.  The social dynamics of my cohort challenged me in ways I didn’t expect.  But the perspective that these friends offered with 4 years of retrospect helped to affirm what I had felt at the time and helped me to take one more step past the pain of some of those experiences and, like Joy showed me earlier that day, choose a perspective of compassion and grace.

Grad school classmates Dave and Kevin and their wives Sarah and Nikki and I all enjoyed dinner together in Albany.

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