The Better Beantown
We fly into Seattle, and from the plane I am taking pictures out the window, trying to capture Emily and Tom’s neighbourhood in anticipation of being able to share these pictures with Glenna and Marlow.
We land, text Emmy, and she sets off to pick us up. We wend our way out the airport to passenger pickup. She’s close, sharing her location, but I decide at the last minute to dart inside to use the restroom, knowing it will be one of those situations like getting up to use the restroom at a restaurant, my leaving making Emmy arrive.
I come back outside to her helping Caleb store our stuff in the trunk of their Mazda5 minivan, a manual. I squeal and run to her, hugging, embracing, squeezing, rocking back and forth. After introducing Caleb, we hop into the back. ‘I’m driving this before we go,’ I note. ‘O, you have to,’ she agrees.
We arrive back at their home around dinnertime. Emily is making quesadillas. I meet Glenna and Marlow for the second time, Caleb for the first. The first time I had met Glenna and Marlow (in person, rather than over FaceTime), they had both had foot and mouth, so we couldn’t get close. This time, I’m happy to offer the option of a hug or high five, if they would like.
The next morning, over breakfast, we make plans. We’re going to drop the kids off at school; Emily and Tom offer to have us join them if we would like on the walk. We would like. We plan a rough itinerary for the day. Emily has the day off; Tom has work, but is working from home. We decide to play tourist, visiting the Space Needle. We also offer an escape room, a favourite flavour of fun. Emily and Tom have never done one, which only makes us want to take them more. Tom isn’t sure, and we give him time to think about it.
As we’re heading out to drop off Glenna and Marlow, Tom tells them ‘We’re going to Temple,’ and they grin. Emily and Tom not being Jewish, Caleb casts me a quizzical glance, and I shrug. It can’t be Jewish Temple, and it’s Wednesday anyway. We’ll see where we’ll be going.
We leave the house, but Emily and Tom have to pop back in for something, so Caleb and I are left with the kids in their double stroller. Marlow is fidgeting, and Glenna is trying to help him, big older sister that she is. They’re not strapped in, even though there are buckles.
‘Should you be buckled in?’ I ask.
‘No,’ Glenna says to me, looking up and smiling.
‘Is that what answer your mom would say?’ I ask, trying to get at whether she is lying without asking directly whether she is lying.
‘Yes,’ she says plainly, and I can tell she’s telling the truth. I had very little doubt, knowing that Emily and Tom would be raising trustworthy kids, but had to confirm for my own trustworthiness’ sake.
Emily and Tom re-emerge from the house, and we walk down the street. We confirm the fact they they do not need to be buckled in, and I am happy to praise Emily’s children. Tom pushes the stroller and Caleb joins him in front. Emily and I walk behind, me having to stop, taking pictures of old Caddies covered in moss, in this wet and overcast land. So different from home.
We arrive at Temple, which turns out to be Temple Bakery. They have a rye pain au chocolat that Glenna would consume her weight in, if she could. Emily, ever frugal, laments her daughter’s champagne taste. I encourage it and try to pay for pastries, but am bested.
We walk back to the house, and in the early afternoon Caleb and I head to Standard Brewing for a long lazy lunch. We are the second ones there, joining someone on his computer working from the brewery. My kind of vibe. They have a lot of lighter beer selections—in the threes—which is nice. We settle on a couple that seem interesting and also order food.
We return back to the house before our evening plans. Emily comes down at one point, excitedly. She declares to Caleb and me, ‘Tom said, “It sounds like it would be fun”!’ We book a game at an escape room downtown, Hourglass Escapes, which will fit nicely with our touristy plans to visit the Space Needle.
The Space Needle is worth the price of admission, which we know ahead of time. Emily regales us with stories of Glenna lying on her belly looking at the gears turning, all of us enamoured with the idea of being fascinated by how the world around us works. We take silly pictures and panoramas from the top. There is a spider art installation of which I am particularly fond, the 2D paintings on a rooftop below looking like 3D giant spiders from this vantage point. I am reminded of Maman.
Afterwards, at the escape room, Caleb and I witness each other hemming and hawing over how much to try to lead, advise, or hold back when solving puzzles with Emily and Tom. Of course, they get the hang of it quickly, but as beginners are sometimes given to fall for red herrings that we steer them away from. We divide and conquer, as it were, moving through the room quickly and escaping. We laugh with each other at the end, Emily wondering what just happened, us not knowing how to explain. We walk back through some of the puzzles. I think that Tom realises he was right when he said it sounds like fun. It is. Hourglass asks if we would like a picture—of course—and what we would like to name our team. ‘The Better Beantown’ we settle on. =P
The next day Caleb and I set off on our own to do touristy things, me leading us through Pike’s Place Market and the things I like there. I make a beeline for special tea for Catherine, Caleb takes a picture in front of the original Starbucks for Dava. We watch the fish fly and try to find a book at a bookstore, with no success. We more successfully find an escape room puzzle (when attempting—also unsuccessfully—to shop for gifts for Glenna and Marlow) and of course have to have it for Melissa. We float from place that seems good to place that seems good.
Lunch at Biscuit Bitch stands out. We read the rules ahead of time and are prepared for the order online, wait at the window operating principles. Caleb is, however, not prepared for the enthusiastic, ‘HEYYY BITCHESSS,’ with which we are greeted at the window. He looks at me with a, I’m going to let you handle this one, look and I place our order. We walk around the corner to grab something to drink at Anchorhead while we wait for our order to be called. After lunch, we retire for the afternoon to Cedar and Spokes for more drinks, of both the caffeine and alcohol varieties. I half apologise to Caleb for the fact that my vacation itineraries can broadly be described as ‘Walk places, drink things, and eat things.’
‘Vacation Caleb,’ he starts, narrating the life of this new character that has entered both of ours, ‘Switches from caffeine to alcohol, and sometimes back again.’
Our last day here with Emily and Tom and their kids, we all settle on Ethiopian for dinner. Emily and Tom live in a historically Black neighbourhood, and there is excellent Ethiopian all around. There’s excellent Ethiopian in Boston, too, but it makes us laugh when we search Ethiopian in Maps and there are five within three blocks of each other. I can’t even remember now which of the three on the south side of the street we picked up food from, but I think it was Café Selam. I know the woman checking us out complimented us on our outfits, even though they were chosen for ‘walking down the street to pick up takeout.’ We still look fabulous as we do so.
Before dinner, we play with the kids on the sidewalk. We’ve enjoyed playing with the kids this trip, me all the more so because Emily and Tom do an excellent job of centring their kids in all of this. When we arrive, it’s up to the kids whether they greet us with high-fives or hugs, and if they don’t want to, that’s OK. We play with blocks or read, and it’s up to the kids how they want to interact. Glenna cheers on Caleb building a block tower that stretches far above her reach, in possibly my favourite picture from the trip. (Another strong contender is one from the next evening, when she absentmindedly turned his lap into her own personal ottoman while trolling him with birdsongs.)
So this evening, Glenna and Marlow are riding their respective bikes down the sidewalk. Glenna, almost 4, has just learned how to ride a bike, although she needs a push start. We take turns pushing her. I’m nervous to let go, not fully trusting her not to fall. This becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: Because I hesitate to let go, I hang on to her handlebars too long and make it so that I am the reason she cannot successfully take off. She recognises this, and correctly declares that she’d rather have Caleb push her, since he’s better at it. She’s absolutely right. His long arms easily send her speeding on her way, and she returns to him again and again to ask for a push.
‘We haven’t had the chance to catch up about you,’ Emmy says to me, while we are at one end of the sidewalk together with Marlow, the men and Glenna at the other end.
‘Mmhmm,’ I agree, and catch her up a little. It’s the same as it always is: Things happen, but do not change. Emily provides her perspective, informed, changing. I mostly smirk. It feels fun to have girlish conversations like this in snippets, concealing them.
It being our last day here, Caleb and I also decide to walk back down the street after supper to spend the evening at the local Black-owned brewery over beers and books. Caleb is excited to spot a hash marking on the sidewalk. ‘Beer near!’ he exclaims. And there is. (After we had gotten settled at Métier Brewing, he looked it up, and indeed the Seattle Hash were hosting a run for someone’s birthday at 7 that evening, and she wanted to ensure her fellow hashers stopped by her favourite brewery.)
The next morning over breakfast, while we are preparing to head out with Emily on her commute to be dropped off at our rental car, Emily and I have a whole conversation without words.
She stands at the fridge, opening it to fetch eggs for the breakfast tacos she is preparing for us. She raises her eyebrows.
I shrug my left shoulder slightly.
She tilts her head.
I nod, blinking slowly, letting out a quiet sigh.
‘Do you need any help with breakfast?’ I ask, knowing the answer.
‘No no,’ she says, reminding me so lovingly of her own mother, the one who would have food ready and waiting in the fridge for all of us, tinfoil marked with permanent marker to designate what was vegetarian, vegan. A kitchen I felt comfortable cooking in, and was allowed to take control of, looking out over all those trees. I wonder if Emily realises she has herself bought a house with one side that is all just floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out over greenery.
