One of the first things people ask when they hear my slow, Southern accent is “Why’d you move to Seattle?” I moved here for Love, I tell them. My (now) husband wooed me here one January with a floating house on Portage Bay, and the promise of winter sailing and a wood burning stove. It was a dreamy as it sounds, and I’m not even a romantic. Three years, two homes, and one baby later, I’m still here.
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You can find Adair online at www.adairrutledge.com.
Physician-assisted death is legal here and I’m grateful for it. Death with Dignity requires a terminal diagnosis by two doctors, allowing for a very large dosage of barbiturate to be prescribed, a medication sometimes referred to as a cocktail.
My mother-in-law Jerene and I shared a deep appreciation for a more classic cocktail, the Manhattan. Jerene said she preferred those that I made, which I cherished, but I cherished even more the way she always asked me to make her one. We’d go there for dinner and she’d greet me with, “Jonathan, I think you should check out the freezer.” A pair of Manhattan glasses would be nestled in the ice. That was her way. She made small things clever and fun.
When it was clear that the return of her cancer would not only be terminal but also increasingly debilitating, she chose the path of Death with Dignity. She learned that the medication leaves a medicinal taste in your mouth, so when she prepared herself and the family, picked a day and time, she asked if I would make her a Manhattan to chase it down.
I made a tray of them. We all joined in - my wife and I, her brother, her aunt, her sober father, even the Death with Dignity volunteer witness would honor Jerene with a sip. Regardless of my track record, I was trembling as I made them. It seemed to take forever. As it was, Jerene’s moment proceeded very lovingly and rather quickly. And I don’t recall if it was my best Manhattan or just a good one. What matters is we all shared a taste, one that she loved.
Stories like this anchor me to Seattle. I’m not from here, but this is where I’m living my life.
I just bought a house and it's allllmost not in Seattle, but I pulled it off, I stayed in town. Even in this economy! I know, right? I was maybe even overly intent on honoring this invisible civic Rubicon between Seattle and (in my case) Shoreline, about preserving the claim to semantic authenticity when I say "I live in Seattle." With my home town, I always append suburban caveats. I mean, I like the baroque paths that get carved into the conversational landscape over dozens of tellings of one's story, and how you refine them a little over time to best reflect the newest narrative ("it's about 60 miles north of San Francisco, about an hour's drive" "yes, exactly, where the fires were" "no, my mom didn't end up having to evacuate, but many of her friends lost their homes" "it's really kind of you to ask"), but at the same time I love that when people ask where am I from and I say "Seattle" they almost always, even in Madrid or Tel Aviv or Copenhagen, know where that is, or they figure they will or would know if they paused long enough to rifle through their mental card catalogue to retrieve a reference that's probably pretty close to relevant (Nirvana? Frasier? Oh, coffee, right?). I like that I can just say "yes, exactly." I like that narrative efficiency. If you ask me where I live, and if we're talking about a geographical location with a civic boundary, well, one word is going to get us most of the way there. Identity politics play into it, too. I get a thrill out of living in the city, however super-mega subjective that idea may be (Lake City:Belltown:Seattle:NYC?), of living somewhere that is stuffed to bursting with things I love to do, a literal embarrassment of riches for an absurdly privileged reasonably frugal middle-classer with some disposable income. I love it here.
I moved to Seattle in 1999, just before the WTO riots that I missed entirely, living in Renton and working in Kirkland and feeling petulant that I was this close to living in the city without quite getting there because when I moved there I hadn't realized that Renton was its own town, not a neighborhood. I read the map but misunderstood the scale. After a few months I took a split-level in Fremont that I adored. I walked my dog and took guitar lessons and had a silly summer tryst and took up swing dancing and got pretty good, and once I tried smoking weed and had a paranoid episode so startling that I called 911 to ask if they could please make sure I wasn't going insane and/or talk me down. The fire fighters who came to my rescue were amused. After about a year the owners kicked me out so they could knock the place down and turn it into a townhome. So I bought a house Beacon Hill, a quirky little thing from the 1910s that made little sense architecturally and that I sold a few years later so I could get married and move to a house in Wedgwood that was big enough to have as many kids as I could get away with before the clock ran out. The marriage ran out before the clock. The house was too big and too expensive and too full of that marriage, so my kids and I moved to a smaller rental up the street. I'd been in Wedgwood for 14 years all told by the time my finances recovered enough to look at buying again, and I had to make a call about where to go next because I planned to stay put for a while.
I struggled with it. I worried a lot about limiting my options unnecessarily, but I worried a lot more about losing the community I'd so painstakingly crafted over the last decade plus. I suck at asking for help and though I know how to be gracious and grateful and truly touched when it's offered, I also suck at accepting it. Even as I believe in all of my deep neural network that people are filled with light and beauty and the capacity for overwhelming generosity, I tend to stick myself in this little mobius-shaped loophole of illogical exemption, as if there's an asterisk by my name in the roll call: "*they don't mean you." It's so dumb, I know, but I wrestle with it. I try to exercise my help-accepting muscles like I'm in a Rocky montage, and I've gotten a lot better, but the thought of starting over with a new community, new schools, new friends, new common understandings, not to mention new bus lines and new dry cleaners and new yoga studios and other such first world problems, well, it would have to be a hell of a house to make it worth it. So I got a map of Seattle and I drew boundary lines for all of the middle schools and high schools, all the bus lines to that go to Microsoft (who is bankrolling this whole operation in exchange for the use of my big giant brain), and where the Light Rail stops are going in. And I made a list of all the things I want in a house. And then I ranked them in order of importance and noted which ones were contingent on which others, and which ones I'd be willing to compromise on provided the house allowed for their possible addition in the future. Lists are the best, right? I love lists. So in conclusion:
Things I Love about Seattle
Driving in pea soup fog and then rounding a bend into sparkling clear sunlight
MoPop, MOHAI, Safeco Field, Benaroya Hall, The Nectar Lounge, Silent Reading Night at the Sorrento Hotel, Cinema Dissection at SIFF, SAM, SAAM, and the main branch of the library
P-patches & dog parks
Water water everywhere! Such a stupid place to put a city, on top of a handfull of large interconnected bodies of water, but it's so lush and gorgeous and all of the lakes and sounds are stunning and glorious
Molly Moon's ice cream
Lopez Island. Close enough.
That so many other people also hate the things I hate about Seattle (rampant homelessness predicated on regressive tax structures among other things, lack of intersectionality in social justice, systemic racism in the police force) and are working really fucking hard to change them
Creative culture
The quality of light
The rain. Yeah, I said it.
Things I Love About My House
Light
Light
So much light
2 bathrooms!
A room for my mom to come and stay as long as she wants as often as she wants
A wee forest tucked into the back of my back yard like the kind that'd be in a dream where you forget you had a whole part of your house but it really is there
It's quiet and peaceful and serene but walk a few steps and you're in a bustling urban neighborhood
Light
There's a spot for my sewing machines
The inspectors were quite confident that the basement wouldn't flood even if there's a biblical rainstorm
There's a perfect wall for this painting I bought before I bought the house and that's not a coincidence, it's one of the reasons I knew this house was right
Just a short walk to the Burke-Gillman I KNOW RIGHT?
Room for all my books
My kids sleep well here
I sleep well here
Fitzcarraldo Earl Troy
(Aka. Fitz, Fitzy, Scootch, Mr. Bonaducci, Fitzcarraldo Espiritu Santo)
Age: 3
Breed: Sleeve Pekingese (see also: Emperor’s sidekick)
Theme Song:
(Sung to the tune of Portugal. The Man’s “Feel It Still”)
“Ooh, I’m a Fitzy eatin’ sticks now
I have eaten 65 or 66 now
Might’ve had my fill
But I eat ‘em still”
I was born in Ethel, WA. Ever heard of it? Didn’t think so. But my mommy had been searching for a friend like me for a long time, and as soon as she saw the ad with my picture she got right in her car and came to get me. When she walked in the door all my brothers and sisters ignored her, but I didn’t. I liked the cut of her jib. And even though I couldn’t really walk yet, I drunkenly ambled over to her and climbed right into her lap. We haven’t been apart since.
My birthplace might’ve been in the sticks, but I’m a city pup at heart. Mommy and daddy and I live in Ballard, and I go to work with mommy on Capitol Hill, so we get to frequent all the cool places in-between. I especially like the joints that are free with their treats and kisses. Hotspots on the treat circuit are the Dray, Barking Dog & Stoup Brewing in Ballard, and Café Pettirosso & Café Argento on Capitol Hill. Pettirosso might rank at the very top, but only because they have very nice owners who make special peanut butter dog biscuits (just for me, I think?) fresh daily. Sometimes mommy tries to go to other cafes to get her lunch, but I always use all 8 lbs. of my might to drag her back to Pettirosso for my “special something.” The staff there doesn’t mind that I come just for treats because they know I’ve got the hunger and it can’t be helped.
My daddy is Irish and he taught me that no matter where you go, it’s always best to sit right up at the bar and chat to the bartender. That way you have friends everywhere you go (and sometimes you get EXTRA treats)!
I’m a very relaxed pup and enjoy sleeping a lot, but aside from naps my favorite pastimes are chewing sticks, playing tug-of-war with my “Fitzy Toy” (aka. a yellow rope), chasing my tail, running & sliding (on wood floors, gravel or snow), and licking daddy’s beard.
On weekends we often visit the beach at Golden Gardens. Daddy always lets me off leash, which scares mommy, but it makes me happy so she tries not to complain. I like to dip my paws in the ocean, race on the sand, hunt for sticks, and bark back at the barking harbor seals. The beach is neat, but I’m always very tired afterward and like to go straight home for snuggles in my special blankie.
As you can tell, I am a Pacific Northwest pup through and through. Aside from just enjoying the local culture, I have lots of friends and family here (shout-out to my best friend, cousin Zeus!), and I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I hope to visit daddy’s homeland Ireland someday, and maybe I will love it there even more (*I would like to try my paw at sheep herding*), but until then, Seattle is the only place for me!
(Let’s be friends…Find me on Instagram at @therealfitztagram)
The concept of “home” is such a complicated one. Is it where you live? Is it where you grew up? Is it where your family is? To me, home is where I can let down all my guards and feel grounded. Home is where I feel like myself.
I grew up in a suburb of Portland, Oregon called Beaverton. I attended a small private school from first grade all the way through high school. For the first eighteen years of my life, I lived in the same house, went to school with the same people, ate at the same restaurants, and drove down the same streets every day.
When it came time to decide where to pursue my higher education, I dared to apply to schools that would require me to travel by plane. I had never strayed far from home, and the thought of moving so far away was both terrifying and exciting. The idea scared me because I honestly didn’t know if I was capable of taking care of myself so far from the security blanket of the close friends and family I knew and loved. But deep down, I yearned to stand on my own two feet and experience something other than the place I had called home my entire life.
Where did I end up attending college? Oregon State University. Wait…that’s not very far from Portland. Right, it’s not. I chickened out. And while I had many fun and challenging experiences there, I couldn’t help but feel that I had cheated myself somehow.
When I graduated I thought, “This is it, Julie. You have to take your chance. You have to go somewhere new. You have to figure out what you’re really made of.”
So when I was offered a job at Safeco Insurance in the University District in Seattle, I knew I had to take it. I know what you’re thinking – “Julie, that’s still not very far from Portland.”
I know, I know. To many, it’s not. But to a girl who had never even slept over at a friend’s house her entire childhood - a girl who had never lived outside of the Oregon border - moving to the bigger, seemingly busier, more diverse, more bustling neighboring city up north was a really big deal.
Moving up to Seattle was both terrifying and thrilling. I had my own one-bedroom apartment, furnished with a bed, a table, and a single chair from IKEA. Just driving in the city was nerve-wracking at first. Living on my own, learning my way around, making new friends, trying new restaurants, and exploring new sites gave me a confidence that has grown over last fifteen years. I’ve lived a lifetime here – I had my first grown-up job here, I was engaged here, bought my first home here, had children here, was divorced here, had a career here, made lifelong friends here, made enemies here.
I know my places here – the places I go when I need to escape, to center myself, to connect with a higher power, the places I go when I want to have fun and let myself go, the places I go when I want to lose myself in a good book or just people-watch. I’ve gone through so many life-altering experiences in this city – experiences that have brought me immense joy and experiences that have brought me to my knees in anguish. Experiences that have shown me who I am.
So yes, Seattle is home. It’s the place where I have become me and feel like my true self. But I know that wherever life may take me, I’ll continue to discover more about who I am, and I’ll take with me the woman that this city has helped to create. Seattle will forever be engrained in who I am.
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You can find Julie on Instagram here.
The concept of a hometown is a complicated one. When people smile and ask “where are you from?” my mind races. Are they referring to the home that gave me this brown skin? The city where I’ve celebrated major milestones in my short 21 years of life? The place where I finally felt like I could put down my things and stay for a while? The answer to each of these questions is different, so I’ve been searching for a place where I can honor the time when I grew up on the periphery of Seattle and when I finally made it to the city.
When people ask about where I’m from, the short answer is straightforward. I was born at the University of Washington Medical Center – and 6 weeks early because I’ve been trying to get ahead of the curve since the beginning. Shortly after, I spent the first 17 years of my life in Federal Way, Washington, a city that’s identified by its 30-mile proximity from Seattle. As a result, I resided near the bleeding age of change that never hit my community. Other school districts were teaching their kids to code as early as 3rd grade, but I didn’t even realize how fast the tech industry was changing the city of Seattle until I got to college.
Even though I was rooted in city bounds that were made for people just passing through, I was always in transit. I would drive to Tacoma at 7 a.m. with my father, sometimes for school and other times to sit in the back of his private practice and file charts. On the weekends, I’d stand on my tippy toes to buy chocolate thumbprint cookies and frozen yogurt from Pike Place Market. As long as I could turn the corner and see my house at the end of the day, I could breathe a sigh of relief. Federal Way was my home base, and that’s not something that everyone can say.
But when my co-workers and classmates and friends ask “where are you from?” and wait expectedly for a short answer, I find myself wishing they would ask, “where do you feel at home?” Without this latter question, you’d miss the story of how my parents went to medical school in Pakistan, immigrated to New York, passed through Chicago, and settled down in Washington State where they would build a life for our family. It is because of them that I have been able to make a life here with my brown skin and Muslim faith and dark eyes that see the world a little bit more clearly. The home of my mother country, Pakistan, has always been inside of me, and it continues to inform my definition of “home.” For this reason, I know that Ineed to be somewhere that acknowledges my history and the fact that home does not have to be one physical place. I carry my Pakistani roots with me in the colorful outfits I wear, the spices on my tongue, and the flowers on my shoulder that bloom like the ones my mom used to see in her hometown in Karachi. And so, I’m learning to only find home in places that allow me to celebrate every part of me. This began to manifest in small ways like that corner stores that sell cardamom pods by the bag or conversations about how to say “Pakistan” with the right inflection.
The way same my Pakistani roots have always been a part of me, I feel lucky to have grown up in a place that has changed with me. No, I don’t have those marks on the wall that show how my height has changed or a copy of my science fair presentation about maglev trains from third grade. But I can pinpoint moments when the city fought to be seen as a place that was capable of growth and supporting a new wave of people like me – anybody who had a story to tell that was rooted in a rich ancestry that predates their time on this Earth. Like the story of my family is forever changed by the India-Pakistan partition, I think about how the Galaxy Theater where I celebrated by 7th and 9th and 11th birthday was ultimately converted to a $2 theater with re-runs only when a shiny new theater opened a block away. I remember when rounding the corner and waiting 30 minutes for the opening of Coldstone Creamery that led to the closure of Baskin Robins, the first place where I could be greeted with a scoop of cookie dough ice cream upon entering the store because I was a “regular.” Only then did I realize that the places that I love will always be in flux, just like me.
And so Federal Way is changing, which means that I should too. Moving to Seattle for college was the first time that I put down roots for myself in Seattle proper, not just its nearby suburb. I was frequently asked to name my hometown when meeting scores of people who’d never learn how to spell my name. Over the course of quick intros during the first day of class or icebreakers on my dorm room floor, it became clear that people didn’t see my hometown the way I did. The hard part of growing up in a place like Federal Way is that success is defined by your ability to escape it. I can recall so many times where people asked me if I lived in “the ghetto” (my mother would laugh at the statement from the balcony of her waterfront home on Dashpoint) or would furrow their brow at the thought of living somewhere so “unsafe.” What mental images did they have of the city outside of the Wild Waves, the only thing close to a theme park and a sad attempt at that, and the Black Friday deals at Best Buy? I even remember talking to a makeup artist about moving from Federal Way to the University District to study engineering and intern at Microsoft. She feathered blush on the apples of my cheeks and jovially said, “so you’ve finally made it out!”
Still, I was determined to make Seattle my own and feel like I was actually “making” it. When college began, I was a bright-eyed 17-year old future M.D. But when I finally moved into my sparkly dorm room with a view of the Space Needle – a surefire sign that I was living the high life - it didn’t feel like the home. I used to be frustrated about going to a college with 40,000+ students because I thought I’d be destined to sink. How could I have something consequential to say in a city that’s defined by its industries, not necessarily its people? I wandered past the Google, Facebook, and Tableau offices while opening my PC – and later, Mac – with no idea that I’d end up in this industry and finally make my mark as a storyteller at a tech company.
Fast forward 2.5 years. I landed my first internship at Microsoft where my job would focus on storytelling at tech companies. I used to put my hands together and thank God that I was paid like an engineer to be a writer, which meant that I could afford the soaring rent cost on my own. My internship enabled me to live in Seattle for the summer instead of commuting 1.5 hours each way from Federal Way just to get to summer classes or work on campus. It was one of the first times I was no longer in transit – and it was the first time where I felt like Seattle was fully mine for the taking.
During my first summer at Microsoft, I experienced deep heartbreak that I’m still recovering from. As I trudged home and deleted scores of screenshots, text messages, photos that reminded me of love that was no longer mine, I waited for Seattle or Redmond to give me the peace I needed, but neither did. Instead, I found myself taking a bus back to the Federal Way Transit Center and walking 9 miles just to get home. I remember turning the corner to see my home at the top of the hill and breathing a sigh of relief – home, this place that I had tried to escape for so long, had waited for me. When I took of my shoes and sprawled out on my bed, I realized that this was the place that stayed constant when everything else is a whirlwind. Seattle could be a place of residence, and Microsoft could be a place to work, but home had always been in Federal Way, even if my opportunities weren’t. And so I went to the bed that night with a newfound peace.
I think my time living in Seattle is a story of falling in love with a place and leaving it anyways. I’m glad to be seen as a local who can confidently suggest the places to buy the best donuts (General Porpoise – I prefer the location in Pioneer Square and recommend the chocolate marshmallow donut) or take someone special out on a date (you can’t go wrong with Oddfellows in Capitol Hill). The only way to find out if I’m really in love with this city is to move and put down some roots somewhere else – after all, Federal Way and Seattle will always welcome me back with a familiar view of Mount Rainier.
Home is not a city or a place or a moment or a thing. Instead, home has always been inside of me. My Pakistani roots, time in transit, and ability to see old places in new ways remind me that I too am a work in progress.
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You can find Aleenah online on Instagram.
Seattle is still figuring out who exactly it’s going to be when it grows up. Which is funny, because when I showed up here for the first time 3 years ago, I thought I knew exactly who I was already, and Seattle didn’t fit in to my life plan even a little bit. Of course, I’m still here, which means I quickly found out that Seattle and I have a lot more in common than I originally thought.
It’s fitting that the biggest transition of my life (from childhood to full-fledged adulthood) is happening in a city in a seemingly constant state of transition as well. I find that Seattle’s energy very much reflects the frenetic efforts of scores of brilliant, talented, diverse people, just trying to find their way. Every inch of this city screams with motion. From the deadlocked traffic and the never-ending arrivals and departures from our airports and seaports, to the way neighborhoods change overnight as new construction goes up and the old is torn away. Everything and everyONE is constantly moving, partially I think out of fear of what would happen if we ever just... stopped.
The home I left, the only one I’ve ever known, had no problem with standing still. I was raised in the quiet and calm of wide open spaces, and I grew up in dense muggy summers and brutal cold winters that made it impossible to even consider doing anything in a hurry. I developed a deep appreciation for simplicity, a heartfelt love of family, and a devotion to the values I was raised on. And I won’t lie, a big part of me was fulfilled by the simple pleasures of small town life. Content enough to have lived my days driving the same familiar streets, seeing the same faces I’d known since childhood. But like many people who now call Seattle home, I looked around one day and recognized that what my beloved little hometown had in heart, it was lacking in opportunity. I had an ambition, a drive, to do something that mattered. I felt compelled to move forward, even if it meant leaving everything behind. And before I even fully knew what was happening a rare opportunity came my way, and changed my entire life.
And now here I am, just like you are. It is both comforting and intimidating to know that everyone else, even the city itself, feels the same, inexplicable urgency - the urgency to move, to advance, to excel, to achieve, to grow - that brought me here in the first place. On one hand, I know I will always find kindred spirits who understand my journey, but on the other, if I indulge my desire to settle down or get comfortable, I can’t help but feel at risk of being left behind entirely.
So how do I reconcile the sleepy small town heart inside of me with the hustle and bustle of a city that can’t slow down? How do I make peace with my desire to put down roots and my fear of underachieving? To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I’m no closer to figuring it out than I was the day I stepped off the plane. But somehow, despite my best efforts to leave my whole heart in the Midwest, somehow during the past few years of trial and error, learning and growth, triumph and heartache, Seattle became home too. So, I guess we’ll figure out who we want to be when we grow up, together.
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You can find Ellen online on Instagram