Sam in Seattle Revisited

Eight years ago this month, I moved to Buffalo by way of my Aunt Julie offering me a plane ticket and then I didn’t use the return portion. It was a move by impulse or maybe it was the first link in a chain.

The decision not to return led to my brother moving to Buffalo, which led to buying the Golf Club, which led to me working there, which led to meeting Dave, which led to Sam. One missed return trip and I got the life I always wanted.

I’ve wondered if destiny looks like impulse but is truly part of a greater plan (this would mean of course that all those Snickers bars have divine purpose); or alternatively if a bunch of random choices are put into play at once, the motion forward just looks like destiny.

But in the background of destiny or coincidence unfolding, I’ve harbored a secret resentment against Seattle. I never wanted to move away but the last few years I lived there, I felt pushed out by the expense and traffic and the worst of it—no matter how hard I tried I could not realize my dreams. When you live in the midst of Microsoft Millionaires realizing their dreams every other Tuesday and 2x on Friday…I became peevish.

But seeing Seattle with Sam--well, the boy has a powerful effect on his Mama’s perception. This trip I focused on Sam. Mostly we did stuff that I never did when I lived there or if I did do, it could not be more different with a toddler in tow. Instead of catering out at the Aquarium, Sam and I watched jellyfish swim and parachute around a tube. We stayed with my brother in Sammamish and attended Eric and Chauntelle’s wedding in Maple Valley—places I barely heard of. We made new friends—Lucas and his moms rather than seeing a lot of my old pals (next time). I did get to enjoy a couple nights in Seattle old style—Phyllis treated us to a night at the Wild Ginger/Triple Door. Nothing like Curried Catfish and Coconut Martinis to remind a girl what she loved about Seattle. Sam stayed with a certified Nanny at the Kryzell house. It was a high end evening for us both.

After this trip, I’m thinking that maybe my life isn’t unfolding by destiny or coincidence but rather biology or what passes for biology in my brain. For years my father has tried to teach me how ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny: In the embryo, supposedly the fetus develops through evolutionary history. Here is the magical realism version of it: Maybe when I was an embryo I stalled in the salmon stage of evolution. It wasn’t coincidence or destiny that brought me to Buffalo, I just needed to swim up my home river to spawn. And because this is magical realism biology, maybe someday the shrimp and his kipper (and his mom) will get to go back out to sea together. I do so miss my fellow fish.