Sometimes I wish I could remember some of the events of my life exactly how they happened, and sometimes I’m glad I can’t! But one event I wish I could remember is our actual move to Seattle from Iowa (see Dad), and how it really all came to pass. But I was very young, and both my parents are now no longer living, so a lot of this will remain buried, at least until I get to heaven and can ask – but quite frankly I don’t think I’m going to care once I get there!
One thing I do remember is that when we up and moved from Iowa to Washington State dad, of course, had to quit his job at Maytag because working remotely wasn’t available back then (how did we live without computers?). And he must have loved my mother very much as he left all his siblings and familiar surroundings he grew up with to pack us up and move to the west coast. So we moved to Seattle without dad having any sort of job opportunity lined up!
When we got there we had no house to live in, but we still had all our camping gear, so we ended up living in our tent at a Washington State Park campground the first weeks of our new adventure. I don’t remember how long it took dad to get a job, but finally he found a good one as an engineer at Boeing, and we finally were able to move out of our tent into a rental house in Seattle, not far from Greenlake.
We were close to Puget Sound, and there were lakes, rivers, streams, mountains and green lushness all around us. Mother was happy, and you know what they say: “Happy wife, happy life!” (At least that’s what my husband says!)
I remember I loved my neighborhood. It seemed as if all around us were friendly people, and there were a couple little girls my age. We quickly became friends.
I remember out in our front yard was a large weeping willow tree, and it was a blast to be able to make little swings for our feet and go floating back and forth until they would finally snap off.
And a really nice thing? There were no snakes (not that I remember, anyway)!
Now instead of going camping every available weekend, we would typically pack a picnic lunch and go spend the day at a lake somewhere close by. Plus, a lot of times during the week mother would take my sister and I – as well as some friends occasionally – and we would head down to Greenlake where we would spend the day walking around the lake and swimming.
We also often got together with our neighbors for potluck dinners and just to have fun. It seemed as though mom laughed a lot more, and it seemed as though dad liked his job. But he really wasn’t home very much…
Then one day after about a year or so, I was told that we were going to be moving again, to another city about 15 miles away. Evidently about the time we had moved into our rental house, dad had also purchased a piece of property with a great view of Lake Washington in that neighboring city, and he had been working every spare moment to build us a new home – at least that explained why he had been gone a lot!
Mom and dad were so excited, but I wasn’t. I had my really good new friends, and now we were going to be so far away. I remember I was sad and I was crying, but I was assured that we would still visit with those same friends often.
And so the day came when we moved to the city that I came to call “YuppieVille” as I grew from being a young girl to a teenager. But that’s for another date, and another time…
The God Of All Comfort 