As I drove past the wooded area, I saw the short path that leads to my dad’s tree which towers over the nearby smaller trees. I have only been out there once since the first day I came to the farm. I should visit it more often, but the weird thing is, I feel like my dad is everywhere on this place, not just where we put his ashes. I cranked the stereo as I drove away. How fitting, the local station played “Big Ol’ Jet Airliner” as I hurled my little car towards the Boise airport.
I know I should be jaded by this point in my life, but I am still floored by the views from the plane, the Space Needle against that azure Seattle skyline, and my first glimpse of the big purple “W” on the stadium. I was overcome with a flood of good memories, times that weren’t that long ago but might as well have been a decade. I left Seattle on January 3rd, but it was when I graduated from UW last June that things really started shifting. I stayed in town, taking the internship/assistant position, while Liv and some of our friends scattered to places across the country. I felt like I was just waiting for the next phase (graduate school) to kick in, so falling into a relationship with Ton-Ton seemed like no big deal.
She and I moved in together after we met at a bar on Capitol Hill and started hanging out. We talked a lot about movies and music, and we just seemed to fit, without a lot of drama or work. I guess I got lonely without my “crew” there to hang out with. Anyway, it didn’t seem like that big a deal, but I guess it meant more to me than I thought. When Ton-Ton came home and told me she was going to marry that guy, I just about lost it. It was a few days before Christmas, and I had no plans for going home. I spent the next couple of weeks crashing on a couple of friends’ couches until I got the call about my dad.
Anyway, my travel went off virtually without a hitch. I took the bus from the airport, texted a few people to let them know I was in town, made a few stops, and met my friend, Camela (pronounced like Pamela), at the HUB after she finished her last class of the day. She’s graduating this year and still lives in Kelsey, so after the long day, it was nice to go back to her room, catch up, and crash early since we both had early morning meetings.
Camela’s room is on the third floor. I snuggled up on her couch, listening to the thuds and bass lines coming from neighboring apartments, and stared at the cobalt sky through her window. About two a.m., some guy walked through the courtyard and yelled, “Hey! Screevo!” at the top of his lungs, for no apparent reason that I could tell. I felt like I was home again.
March 7, 2013
I went into the office for our annual meeting this morning. Last year’s meeting was held a couple of weeks later, and I was lucky enough to have come on board, at least in a small way until I finished my year at UW, just before the meeting. I loved the building where their office is. They share a converted Victorian house, a block over from the Queen Anne Public Library, with another environmental non-profit that lobbies for better air quality in the Pacific Northwest. My boss, Alma, met me at the door with a hug and a cup of coffee.
“My goddess, Billie, it feels like you’ve been gone a hundred years!”
“I know, me, too.” I sipped the coffee and reached across the conference table for a sky blue doughnut with purple sprinkles.
Alma moved on to greet others coming in, getting everybody ready for the meeting, while her assistant went about laying info packets and swag in front of each chair at the table. Alma came back to me to introduce me to a few people I had not met and a couple that started late last year she wasn’t sure of how our timelines matched up. All-in-all, there were about fifteen of us, and a few more on speaker phone.
The glossy cover page had a snow-covered mountain under a royal blue sky, and superimposed over it, was a drilling well with fracking tunnels coming out underneath, and one more layer with the “no” symbol over the top of everything. Strangely, what it reminded me of was the mountains near the farm, Squaw Butte, and even the Boise National Forest, where I went skiing with Liv and Nate. Alma opened the meeting with a quote from John Muir. We flipped through the packets, as Alma went over the progress of the past year; all the legislative battles and town ordinances, new and continuing partnerships, funding sources, and plans for 2014-2015. We had a quick question and answer session before taking a break and separating into our work teams. I sat at the table, still staring at the cover of the packet.
“How long are you in town for?” I looked up to find Alma smiling down at me.
“Just a few days. I have to go see my mom in Sacramento, then it’s back to the farm.”
“Oh, yeah, you did
