Seattle. Again.

I am back on the coast-this time for a short spell.

I write this reflecting on what it means to be back in this city. Seattle, with whom I have always had this strange love-hate relationship with, and knowing that here I am again, and that Seattle's been an on and off addiction for the majority of my life, seems like a reincarnation. Today feels a bit surreal as all these pleasant and not so pleasant memories return. Some of the best days of my life have been had here. Falling in love, graduating college, being here for my niece's birth. And the worst. Driving into airplane wings, shutting down I-405 after losing a load of gravel on the freeway, the WTO and Mardi Gras Riots, the Nisqually Quake. Add in enough betrayal to fill several historical romances, and Love/Hate doesn't even begin to describe my dance with the emerald city.

The traffic here is worse than on my last visit-if that is even possible. There are sky cranes everywhere, and more than before, I keep getting this sense that Seattle really likes itself. A lot. I have to laugh as the push, this constant drumbeat repeated in the Seattle Stranger and the Seattle Weekly, this birthright to be more Utopian than anywhere else on the planet, trumps reality. My friend Jeanette and her partner Paula live over on the Peninsula and when I mentioned the traffic to her yesterday, she laughed. "Oh my God. We don't even go over there. Things are slower over here and that's just the way we like it."

You know something is wrong with the place when even the Lesbian's begin to roll their eyes at the futility and effort that just maintaining a "Seattle trafficstyle" becomes.

But I'm here again, I've got my game face on and I'm making the best of it. For the next few nights I'll stay with my folks, after having just spent a few days with my family in the Bavarian wonderland of Leavenworth, Washington.

Yet, today is why I am here. I write this from a position of nervous anticipation. Today I meet with the head of the Graduate Program I've been admitted to. Today I will get a better sense of what the next three years of my life is going to look like. Today seems a bit more overwhelming than it should.

In anticipation I went to the local western store yesterday and bought a new shirt. Tough enough to wear pink, it's a retro shirt with spring and new and hope stitched all over it. No cowboy hat this time, just the trademark baseball cap, the new shirt, the scuffed, lace-up boots and my newest pair of Wranglers-my best good luck charms.

Yesterday on the ferry over to Kingston, one of the Washington State Ferry Employees told me that my the lace up boots told stories. He remarked as I stood looking over the gray waters of the Puget Sound, "Those boots they look like they been loved, hated, and that they've seen life. They also look as comfortable as any boots I've ever owned. I had a pair of lace up's once. I sure miss 'em." I nodded as he turned to empty a trash container. He had a point. I guess that since I am about to enter a graduate level writer's program, my boots should be able to tell stories-in case my brain seizes and draws a blank.

The owner of the western store where I got those boots is a man who has a become a casual friend over the years. He has bright blue eyes that seem just shy of smiling all over you. He stands behind that counter, a messiah to all the other country folk trapped in urban lives and as he wears his straw cowboy hat and a Cowboy Up! sweatshirt, he looks like he just stepped off a John Deere Tractor in Rosalia or Othello or Grandview rather than doing his cash register counter duty in Auburn. Between his barrel racing cowgirls and trucker customers who just got off the road, he talks about his business, getting his first mortgage and whether the beer he has before bed is contributing to sleep apnea. We talk about friends falling into and out of addiction, how easy it is to enable and how tough it can be to show tough love. We talk about the friends he runs into that owe him money who he often finds at the Muckleshoot Indian Casino with plenty left to bet. We talk about business and hope and the future, which seems to end us up in a conversation about heaven. He admits he doesn't make it to church all that often, with the beer and all sometimes getting in the way of a good sermon. But he tells me as he rings me up, that he really tries to live as right as he can, and that if he has one goal in this life, it's to get to heaven in the next. He offers that the occasional sermon now and then sure helps him stay on that path.

I can't really argue that point. Although I don't really have any idea what heaven is going to be like. And, I don't even try to define heaven because it seems like it is one of those places you really can't define and also because I'd rather be surprised and caught off guard than disappointed in case it doesn't meet my expectations. All I know is there better be Hot Wheels, Horses, and Hotties there.

Admittedly, the best part of this journey, this trip to Seattle again, has been the familiar. That rekindling of time, catching up with my parents and my sister and my niece Kelcy. It wasn't that many years ago when I thought I would never cherish time spent with my parents. They probably couldn't stand the thought of me much then either.

Not everything is perfect. My mother can still drive me crazy, and my siblings and I can role play hysterical multi-act passion plays that my parents have settled into as a part of standard of who they are. Rather than fight this behavior or try to encourage change, I am learning about acceptance and there is comfort in the predictability outcomes of hanging out with my folks. They are in the beginning stages of planning their 50th wedding anniversary and I am beginning to realize that it is the reliability of their conflicts that is one of the comforting high marks of any homecoming. As much as they argue about eating out, who takes the dog out and how much and which vacation destinations end up on the calendar, it is reassuring to see how steadfast they remain to one another. They mirror that one can argue with the one you love and still live to tell about it and testify to the value of time well spent with one another. I think we need to hear that message a bit more often because just as Seattle is always searching for the latest rendition of Utopia in urban planning, the rest of us are always searching for the latest version of utopia in our relationships.

My father and I were talking about heaven last night. About the western store owner and that he is keeping his eyes on heaven but still seems to miss the occasional sermon because a six pack got in the way. I asked dad what he is going to do if his marriage turns out to be eternal. What if he ends up married to mom forever? He looked at me straight faced and pondered, "Do you think they'll have suicide there?"

My mother was not pleased. "Did he really say that?" She had that getting-to but not quite there yet furious tone. In the other room you could hear my father giggling. Heaven could be getting closer than he thought.

In that moment, I accepted that I was truly back in Seattle. Again.

This heavenly place guarded by mountains and water that isn't really all that perfect. This place of utopia where they are addicted to loving themselves just a little too much, a place where people argue a lot but never seem to get anywhere, but also a place where if you can just accept things for what they are, well you can be pretty dang happy indeed.