Summer’s Over

I found nirvana this summer. It had been hiding in Seattle all along.

Nirvana—for me at least—is waking up early on a summer’s day and throwing on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. Nirvana is hopping on my bike—in sandals no less—and pedaling off into the warm morning, the sun already up and cheery.



Nirvana is following a road though a green woods and down a hill.



This road leads to a street that runs down to a leafy little neighborhood along the shore of a large blue lake.



There’s a flower shop here with a red British phone booth, and a name that always makes me smile.



If you follow this road it ends up in the waters of Lake Washington.



But my destination is just to the right, a park along the lake, and a place to swim.



Nirvana is ditching those sandals and shorts and diving into water cool and refreshing, swimming back and forth with the sun beating down and the calm rhythm of a stroke, the water buoyant, the air warm.

Nirvana is looking up and seeing in the distance, illusive and astounding, the outline of Mt. Rainer, shimmering like a mirage.



Nirvana is, upon finishing the laps, stretching out on a towel in the grass, letting the sun dry my hair, looking out at this amazing new day.



Nirvana is also the cup of yogurt and fresh blackberries brought for breakfast, the blackberries picked just down the hill.



Nirvana is watching little kids play at the water’s edge.



A lifeguard rowing at his post.



And feeling that nothing can be bad on a day that begins like this.

All dumb jokes about nineties grunge bands aside—Seattle, in the summer, is nirvana.



This is all by preface for something I need to talk about, it’s a bit more on the life side of that food/life equation than I usually spend my time on. If you’re here for recipes, I’m afraid I don’t have any for you today. These days all I have is questions.

You see, the truth is, I didn’t really move to Seattle.

I know I said I did, but it wasn’t a real move. Not the sort of move where you give everyone your new mailing address, pack what you own into a big truck, and say goodbye to wherever you have been living. I didn’t do any of those things. I left most of what I own in San Francisco, in an apartment that is waiting for me to come back, along with a big pile of mail I didn’t have forwarded. Instead I escaped to Seattle, for the summer.

Some of you have sent me emails telling me that what I’ve done is brave and maybe even a little inspiring—this turning my life upside down—but I don’t think I can take credit for that. I’ve done something different—merely taken a step back from my life. I needed some space and time to think. I wanted to write, and to spend time with my nieces, and the stars aligned in a way that gave me the time and a place to spend it in and I am grateful for all of those things. But I fully expected to return to San Francisco at the end of the summer. As many of you know, I love San Francisco. To me, it’s home.



If I am completely honest I will admit that maybe in the back of my head I thought there might be something else going on. I remember talking to a friend of mine and saying what if I met someone in Seattle and fell in love—I think I am finally coming to a place where I am ready to not be on my own anymore. Meeting someone would be bad, I said, because it would mean that I couldn’t easily come back to San Francisco, back to my life.

But my friend is an optimist and suggested that perhaps I might meet someone in Seattle who is ready to leave the city and wouldn’t mind moving to California.

I had to laugh at that, the likelihood of all those variable lining up seemed beyond impossible. No, I said, falling in love with someone in Seattle would be bad.

I never expected that I might fall in love with Seattle itself.

It happened slowly. I remember sitting in a coffee shop the first week I arrived in Seattle last March. I watched people come in and out of the café (and believe me when I say that people in Seattle like their coffee, there was a lot of foot traffic). I began to notice that most of the women were dressed like me. In my jeans and fleece and down vest I fit in perfectly. And my car happens to be the most common car in Seattle, only my out-of-state license plates mark me as an outsider (and a dreaded Californian no less). Have I been a Seattleite all along and just not known it?

But it’s more than clothes and cars—those are silly and superficial things. It’s the parks everywhere, the trees, the dogs, and the bicycles. It’s the fact that people are friendly (I’ve never thought my hometown an unfriendly place, but Seattle puts us to shame). It’s the boats and the community gardens and the values that makes Seattle build a showcase of a library (Seattle residents check out more books per capita than any other US city). It’s the fact that when a big chunk of prime downtown waterfront property came up for sale recently it was turned into an outdoor sculpture park, open free to the public. In most cities that lot would have become luxury condos or the evil but now ubiquitous live-work lofts.



So yes, I have been falling in love with Seattle. In the beginning of the summer I told friends that I was cheating on my city—having a summer fling. And while I loved the fact that I could ride my bike to the farmers’ market, go the beach with my nieces, and bike for hours along Lake Washington, I fully expected to go home at the end of the summer. Seattle might be my summer fling, but I have loved San Francisco all my life. In my mind I was already married. I might be cheating on my city, but my heart would find its way home. It had to. I am a Northern Californian, fiercely so. This Seattle thing was just a phase.

Then I fell in love with my nieces.

I had always loved them, of course, but I fell in love with being in their lives on a regular basis. I fell in love with taking Alice to the farm, with feeding Cece berries and tickling her and reading her books. I fell in love with trips to the wading pool and the playground and making up silly songs to make Alice laugh. The first year of her life I saw Alice three times—I told myself that was okay, she wouldn’t remember seeing me anyway—but I don’t want to be an aunt only on the holidays, I want to be an active part of my nieces’ lives. The other day we were driving in the car and Alice said to me, “I love you all the time, Aunt Ti-ti” and it almost made me cry.

How can I walk away from that?



I’ve cried a lot this summer. Nearly every day I go back and forth, trying to find the answer, the way forward. Could I really leave San Francisco? My friends, my memories, my childhood all live there, my beloved Mt. Tam. Even though I have traveled and lived in other countries, the Bay Area has always been my home, the place I knew I would return to. If I leave I pull up roots so deep and strong I may not know who I am any longer. I can’t contemplate the idea without bursting into tears.

And yet, San Francisco may not be who I am any longer. I came to Seattle for a reason—and part of that was the need to get away from my life in California. My life there is busy, overbooked, often exhausting. The Bay Area is huge these days, I have friends who have moved to far-flung towns miles away, everyone is so spread out. I spend too much time in a car, too much time in traffic (and I don't even communte for work). More and more these days I want something simpler, easier. When I think about the kind of life I want to build for myself going forward, it seems easier to find in Seattle, more accessible.

That has been part of my process this summer, stepping back and looking forward. Taking myself out of my daily routines has been good, it helps me to see what it is that I am yearning for these days. What is it that I need and want? When I moved back to San Francisco from Asia, nine years ago, I knew what I wanted: a life in California. I wanted a home, a career, a community, and friends—none of which I had at the time. I’ve spent nine years building that life—but nearly a decade later I find it doesn’t fit as well as it once did. I no longer want to be rushing about, involved in this project and that, busy all the time. I have wonderful friends that I rarely get to see anymore, when we try to plan dinner together we are looking at our calendars months out. I don’t know if this is an early mid-life crisis or urban burnout but it’s something, let me tell you. It's something important.



More often these days I want something smaller, slower. I want a garden, and a big dining table where friends and family feel welcomed and comfortable. I want to walk amongst trees, to know my neighbors, to build a community. I want nature nearby and accessible. All this feels possible in Seattle, more so than San Francisco.

But oh, to leave the Bay Area—the very idea wrenches my heart. How can I give up the farmers’ market, the year round growing climate, and fresh and plentiful Meyers lemons? (I have paid staggering amounts of money for some of the saddest lemons I have ever seen in my life this summer). How much will I crave the Tea Leaf salad at Burma Superstar, the burritos from my neighborhood taqueria, the peaches from Woodleaf Farms, and Joe Shirmer’s dry farmed early girl tomatoes? How sad will I be not to be able to drive down the coast for a walk on the beach, a hike in the redwoods, and dinner of artichoke soup and olallieberry pie at Duarte’s Tavern in Pescadero? How wrong is it that I am contemplating moving to a region that is famous for fish? Fish!

I don't even like fish.

Have you ever fallen in love with someone you didn't expect to? I have, several times. I sit there and watch them—and already I can feel that I am falling—and I think: You? Really? You're the one I'm supposed to love? I thought you would be... taller... blonder... more intellectual... more adventureous... more...

In this case, I thought you'd be San Francisco.

My friends tell me that I’m lucky, I am choosing between two really great cities. That, however, is precisely the problem. And how does one choose between a city and region you have loved for years—that you have given your heart to and expected to live happily ever after together—and this upstart of a city that has captured your attention for the moment but who knows where it’s going? I feel like a woman thinking of leaving her marriage for the affair that seems great now, but who knows what the long term might be. It’s a lot to put on this fledgling romance I’m having with Seattle: will you be enough to make up for all that I will have to leave behind?

Because leaving San Francisco, if that is indeed what I end up doing, will be like leaving a part of my soul behind: my history, my heart, my friends, my life. How can I do that?

I don’t have any answers at this point, but sitting in the sun on the grass next to the water on a summer’s day makes me want to be here, in this smaller, slower city. Summer in Seattle is nirvana.

But summer’s over, and the rains are coming.



PS. Just to take this romance metaphor to even more ridiculous proportions (you didn't think it was possible, eh?). Some friends have suggested I try polyamory—split my time between the two cities and love them both. While this may sound like the best of all possible worlds, at the end of the day I'm not that kind of a girl. I really want to settle down with one city, I just have to figure out which one it is.