My Hideaway: Reliving a Seattle Memory

On the meaning of "home"

It has been difficult for me to write during the last couple weeks, since returning from Portugal. The pull to come back to the US while I was in Portugal was so strong, I felt certain that when I got here, the reason for the pull would be obvious. It remains elusive, nearly 3 weeks after returning.

Before leaving for Europe, and planning to be there through August, I made arrangements for someone to apartment-sit, leaving me with the ability to start moving into my next home - a place with an art studio, a yard, and biking trails nearby, just a bit outside NYC - sooner than planned.

But as I am learning, plans often change due to circumstances we don’t control. When I landed at Newark airport from Lisbon, I received a text message that this next home would be uninhabitable for at least a month due to a leak that flooded the place, requiring a full reconstruction of the walls, ceilings, and floors.

So in this plot twist, I have become a transient in my own city. My physical address changes each week. I’m appreciative of the many gracious offers from friends and family for a place to stay, and have enjoyed living in different parts of the city, but life in a suitcase is not filling my Cancer soul.

As a Cancer, I wrap my identity in my home. As I listen to every self-help voice in my head telling me to enjoy the adventure, that this is happening for me, that this uncertainty is growth - my nervous system is not convinced.

Without the stability of a home, and with the looming uncertainty of an answer to the question “what’s next” for me (after this supposed sabbatical I’m on), I am untethered in a way I have never been. I am dealing with it in real time, which is a generous way of saying “badly, some days.”

Without a fixed address, the small architecture of a normal life falls apart. I cannot set steady working hours. I cannot commit to seeing a friend two weeks out. I do not know where I will physically be next Thursday. My calendar has become theoretical. And it turns out that when my location is a moving target, so is my mood. I am sad, anxious, fragile, and overwhelmed. Instability is exhausting even when you know, intellectually, that it’s temporary.

I want community, connection, creativity, purpose, and a home — the lack of which is dragging the other four down.

My actual work is to separate the emotional grounding that home provides from its physical space. My community is - and has always been - all over the world. Connection comes with care for the relationships I build. Creativity travels in my sketchbook. Purpose is not zip-code dependent.

Home is the one desire that I can’t fake my way around.

I don’t know exactly when I move into the next real home. I do know what I’m rebuilding it for, and that clarity is the closest thing to a foundation I’ve got right now.

In the meantime, I pulled up something that I wrote in August 2024 about my last home. It was a few nights before I left my Seattle home — a place that I loved dearly and reminisce about nearly daily.

I’d love to share this with you.

My Hideaway: An Ode to My Seattle Home

a stunning sunrise view from my front room window in my Seattle home

Written August 31, 2024

I’ve lived in this house for nine years and this is the first time I’ve sat in this very spot on my front porch. It is the perfect hiding place, tucked behind at least twelve species of Pacific Northwest foliage. The bending tree branches in front of me extend to each other, like hands joined in an arch, at the perfect height so that the couples and families taking after-dinner walks with their dogs can’t see me watching them.

I listen to the hushed rustling of the summer leaves in the wind. They are still thriving in this late summer, not crisp and dying for the Fall yet. The air is warm. Unseasonably warm for this time of year in the PNW - but, then again, who even knows what that means anymore? The PNW has been my home for 25 years - nearly half my life. Enough time to have seen the weather patterns change. Indian summers have become “normal” in the last few years.

I sit quietly, though, anxious. Anxious because my phone is inside and I’m worried that, without it, I am missing this moment. Will I remember this if I don’t take a picture? Will I appreciate this if I don’t do a meditation, right here, right now? Then I become aware of my thoughts, and realize that I must chill, that the only thing that truly matters right now is being present in this enjoyment of one of the last moments in this house.

A soundtrack of Joni Mitchell starts in my head ...

Oh Carey, get out your cane (Carey, get out your cane). 
And I’ll put on some silver (I’ll put on some silver)

... as I notice the sounds of my neighborhood. There are birds overhead. I have no idea how many bird species live up there. I’ve never even thought about it before this second, though I have spent many moments listening to them all carrying on and communicating with each other. Cars go by at a regular cadence. Like an ocean, in slow motion.

Oh, you’re a mean old Daddy
But I like you I like you I like you

I’m wishing I could paint this moment. I’ve had a similar thought countless time while living in this house. More often than not, this sentiment is directed at the front room window. Every morning, it is a new view - a beautiful surprise. Will it be a coral sunrise, or will it be a midnight blue with a fast fade to pale yellow? Will the clouds be cotton white or candy pink? If only I could have captured this view every single day that I lived here. How many pictures would that be?

I moved in here on November 17, 2015. It was a ridiculously cold Thanksgiving that year. The power went out. For four full days. We were freezing. We couldn’t find our stuff, buried in moving boxes in the dark. We couldn't remember where we packed the headlamps. We didn't know how the gas fireplace worked.

3,209. It would be 3,209 pictures of the front room window.

I catch myself again, spiraling in the memories, feelings, and many highs and lows of the last 3,209 days.

I’m not present. I inhale. And then I exhale.

Friends and visitors to this house over the years have told me that it feels like a treehouse. The coolest compliment. I think about this newfound peep spot that I’m sitting in and the word “hideaway” comes to mind.

Come on down to the Mermaid Café, and I will
Buy you a bottle of wine 
And we’ll laugh and toast to nothing 
And smash our empty glasses down

I remind myself to just enjoy this moment. I focus back on here. I am here. This is now. I’m breathing, smelling, seeing, being.

Deep inhale... long slow exhale.

My mind is tugged to the past:“I wonder if Barry would want me to take a picture of this right now and send it to him.”

And to the future: “NYC is going to be so different than this.”

And I think how hard it is to just stay in the present. To stay here. To live now. Why must we need an anchor that is anywhere but where we are?

Oh, you know it sure is hard to leave here 
But it’s really not my home

Joni. My angel, embedded in my brain and my heart. Her words are cosmic, coming from nowhere and sparking my brain into a blaze in a micro-instant. How does she do that?

I decide that it’s time to go inside, but I’m not quite sure what I want to do when I get there. Maybe I’m going to get my phone and come right back out here to take pictures. Or just have the knowledge of this place as my new security blanket.

I remind myself to breathe.

Inhale…

Exhale…

Inhale…

Exhale…

And just like that, “now” is no longer. It’s fleeting but that doesn’t make it insignificant.

Live with Love. Be Unexpected. 😘