Mukilteo Musings

Why Did We Move to Seattle

Yesterday was our 31st Wedding Anniversary. Usually, my husband and I reminisce on June 16 about why over the years we made the choices we did. Part of our honeymoon was spent in Seattle but at that time we were still in college in Montana and there was no way I wanted to move to a big city or ever ever leave Montana. As it turned out, graduate school took us from Montana to Kansas City. Dave's parents were from Kansas and Dave's brother had gone to medical school there; KU Medical Center had some fabulous graduate programs in biochemistry and pharmacology. Two law schools were nearby and I was admitted to both after being a teacher's aide for two years. So we survived there for 5 1/2 miserable years though we both completed excellent graduate programs.

Dave's mentor who was originally from Iowa wanted Dave to take a post-doc position in North Carolina at NIEHS--a branch of NIH, the National Institutes of Health. Dave was accepted so I applied for law positions. Oh man, I did not want to go; I had been away from home for too long. Dave's mentor kept telling us "you make a home wherever you live and the surroundings do not matter that much." But he was from IOWA and he did not know that I would have dreams at night about driving around a corner and beautiful snow covered mountains would be looming right there at the end of the street--in Kansas! Letters I sent to North Carolina were all returned with rejections to "MR. Janet...". Dave saw an ad for a position at the University of Washington--in Seattle and against his mentor's advice, he applied and was offered the job. WOW!!

Seattle was beautiful, I remembered from our honeymoon, but it was a big city. I didn't care anymore because I had gotten used to Kansas City and Seattle, surrounded by huge mountains, was a day's drive from Montana. When I applied for jobs in Seattle, letters showing interest in me were addressed to "MS. Janet...". All of our belongings fit into a small U-Haul and along with our Golden Retriever named Monty (Montana Gold), we headed west and north in 1979, twenty five years ago. We have NOT once regretted the decision; I have never been back to Kansas City; Dave's mentor is still there.

Yesterday, Dave took the day off because it is our day. Our daughter is still in school; our son is in Guatemala so we took a simple drive--just the two of us. Immediately north of Seattle and Mukilteo where the tulips grow, they also grow strawberries and asparagus. The day was still and crystal clear. At many different spots along the Skagit River, we could see the Olympics, the Cascades, white Mt. Rainier, and bright white Mt. Baker and Puget Sound. I haven't had those recurring dreams for 25 years and surroundings do matter....to me.

We stopped to buy strawberries at one of the dozens of roadside stands---and asparagus and onions and lettuce and cherries and tay berries---and we marveled at the scenery. At one point along the curvy road, my husband who I know appreciates nice breasts on women, almost ran off the road. "Whoa, did you see that cow?? She really needed to be milked." Geez, it was just a cow!!!

A quote from Jonathan Raban, a Seattle author originally from England from the anthology, "Reading Seattle: The City in Prose" by Donahue and Tombold:

"It was something in the disposition of the landscape, the shifting lights and the colors of the city. Something. It was hard to nail it, but this something was a mysterious gift that Seattle made to every immigrant who cared to see it. Wherever you came from, Seattle was queerly like home...It was an extraordinarily soft and pliant city...people who came to Seattle could somehow recast it in the image of home, arranging the city around themselves like so many pillows on a bed. One day you'd wake up to find things so snug and familiar that you could easily believe that you'd been born here."

SOMETHING!! Our 25 year old gift.