I Heart Cities

(Just a warning and apology up front: this post is overly long and wordy, but I count this as my "scrapbook" so I have permission to indulge myself a little here.)

I love cities. I can't get enough of them. If I'm feeling stressed or depressed or numb, I drive across the bridge into Seattle and I feel like myself again. It was the same in Portland, but our house was much closer and I lived my life more in the city than I do here. When I'm in a city I feel awake, alive, energized, happy. All the world is right when I have tall buildings and street noise surrounding me.

I don't love living in the suburbs.   I live here because of the children and their "education" and "safety." (Please do the air quotes with your fingers as you read that.) Someday I will hold this over their heads, "I moved to the suburbs for you! For years I was dying inside, wasting away in the 'burbs. All for you!"  Although I do have to admit, I appreciate sleeping a little longer on garbage day without the guy rattling down my street with his shopping cart full of bottles and cans, pilfering through our recycling at 6am, sending the dog into a frenzy and waking up the kids.   And also the only shootings I hear about in our neighborhood now involve a syringe, an aesthetician, and Botox.

The first time I ever flew I was 20 years old, and I flew alone next to a very seasoned and wise seven-year-old traveler. I was meeting Kolby in San Francisco and was giddy with excitement. I grinned stupidly the entire flight. My first flight! On an airplane! To the Big City! I couldn't contain my glee.  My seven-year-old flight guide was very patient with all my questions and my bouncing in my seat.

I adored San Francisco.  I wasn't quite brave enough to explore it on my own. Kolby tried to talk me into taking another cab to meet him at MOMA when I arrived, but I would have none of that. My first cab ride from the airport had been terrifying enough (I've had two near death experiences with San Franciso taxi drivers--I suggest you avoid them at all costs.) But when he was done (he was there for work) we started wandering the streets of San Francisco, and I was in heaven. Kolby tired out and needed naps during the day. I wouldn't think of wasting even a minute of my time sleeping. I had to keep seeing and smelling and tasting.

Not long after that someone in my class at school mentioned that she lived downtown. People live downtown? It was news to me. Kolby and I started driving around downtown SLC and the Avenues and within a couple of weeks we had our condo on the market and were moving to the Avenues. I get so nostalgic thinking about our years living on J and H street. We would walk downtown to the city library, get sushi, catch a movie, and then walk back home. We would go for hikes up City Creek Canyon. We'd walk up and down the avenues, admiring all the bungalows and four-squares and dreaming about which one would be ours. On weekends we walked to Einstein's for breakfast. The Avenues are (is?) still on my list of favorite places to live.


December of 1998,  we visited Seattle. Kolby and I, still babies at the time, were contemplating moving "out of state" and Portland and Seattle were at the top of our list. Seattle felt too huge and scary to actually LIVE here. It was fun to visit, we loved Pike Place and the Space Needle, and Elliott Bay Bookstore. But the thought of moving here just terrified us. It seemed so big.  And it was cold. Really really freaking cold. The winter humidity just cut through my born-and-raised-in-the-dry-dry-desert bones. (I do think that the really depressing motel we were staying in with it's cinderblock walls and stairwells that smelled like pee had a large part to do with our initial impression of Seattle.  But hey, it was $49 a night!)

Top of the Space Needle

Six months later we took a weekend trip to Portland, a city I fell in love with instantly. The only way I can describe it, and I'm aware that it sounds ridiculous: Portland is huggable--you want to hug it, and it hugs you right back. It smells like a mixture of coffee, patchouli, and B.O.   I hope you like that smell.  It's oddly alluring.  Portland is the perfect sized city. It's not super-sized. Not kiddie sized. It's like a 22 oz. soda. Just right. It has the rivers and all those fantastic bridges. It has music and amazing food and a perfect amount of weirdness. You can drive or walk through it and really feel like you've *experienced* Portland, and yet even after living there 8 years, I was always discovering something new. You might think I'm romanticizing it, but I'm not. Portland rocks. It did take me a very long time to get my bearings though, without the Wasatch Mountains on the East to keep me oriented.  (Who knew a year later we would be packing our bags and moving to Portland?)

We went back to San Francisco with Madeline when she was about two years old and discovered that she loves cities like her momma loves cities! She just ate it up. She loved the cars and the noise and the excitement. She tried to catch pigeons to bring home with her. She loved the trolley and the street performers and the boat rides. She didn't even mind my second (her first) life-threatening taxi ride.


Eventually, after moving to Portland, we returned to Seattle without the fear of having to actually live there, and I really loved it. In fact, one of my favorite weekends was when the girls and I drove up from Portland to spend the weekend with Kolby, who was finishing up a long week of city-hopping for work. We had one of those perfect moments eating breakfast at a sidewalk cafe in an alley at Pike's Place. There was a street musician playing the guitar and singing, and the acoustics were perfect, much like when I sing in the shower. (You should hear me. You would be impressed.) Sunny warm day, city, music, good food, my family. Aaaah. Bottled up and saved forever.

The first time I went to New York City, I was ready to pick up and move there. I was in awe. It was a couple years after 9/11, and everyone I met in stores, restaurants, cabs, the hotel, everyone still wanted to talk about their experiences. I cried more than a few tears sitting on a bench at Ground Zero. I visited all the tourist destinations--Statue of Liberty, Central Park, Empire State Building, etc. I walked my feet until they had blisters, then had to buy better shoes so I could walk some more. Standing in Times Square was just breathtaking. I shopped. And shopped. And ate and ate. And came home exhausted and yet somehow rested.

Times Square

Top o' the Empire State Building

The second time I went to New York I sought out neighborhoods--Chelsea and Greenwich Village. I saw some shows. We ate at yummy restaurants and listened to live music and let our local friends show us their favorite hole-in-the-wall places to eat or listen to bands perform. I wore myself out wandering through the floors of MOMA, where I saw original works by Picasso, van Gogh,  and Pollack for the first time. I watched all the families walking the streets and wondered why we weren't living there too.



Kolby is in New York now, and I am jealous.

We go back in May for our friends' wedding on the Brooklyn Bridge and to see another friend starring in his first big Broadway hit. I can smell it already.