the first week

Lately I can't stop thinking about our first week in Seattle.

It was early August, almost exactly three years ago. We flew into Seattle from Hanoi, after a month of frenetic-paced work teaching English in sweltering heat, and Hannah and Luke picked us up, late at night, and drove us to their house at Greenlake, where we slept.

The images play in my head like a silent film. Seattle was so quiet, so quiet and cool and empty and clean, compared to Hanoi. In my memory the days are cloudy, grey and white. It was a respite.

We slept in a spare room, under a white down comforter. We woke and ate plain yogurt with granola, drank steaming mugs of coffee. At twilight, which didn't happen until late, nine pm, we walked to and then around the lake, and we thought to ourselves, "This is what people in Seattle do." We couldn't sleep, jet-lagged, and we watched episodes of the Office on dvd, on our laptop, in our bed. We gathered our first landmarks, eating at Gorditos, drinking coffee at The Green Bean (RIP), where I copied down this quote, which now hangs in our house:

Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom undisturbed by dividing lines...

The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and find themselves free; free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, dance their own dances; free to leave and follow their own vocations.

Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adopt the lifestyle of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guests to find their own.(Henri Nouwen)

I am not excited about leaving Seattle for the cornfields of Indiana. I'm not. I do believe that it is God's good provision for us. But it makes me cry to think about leaving this beautiful city.

some recent favorites

I think it's funny

I think it's funny that I'm moving from what is famously "the most un-churched city in America" to what is likely the most over-churched small town in America.

More on that, later.

25 of 52

I think this was another Nancy Pearl-inspired selection. The drawings were lovely, but the story wasn't terribly original and the moral was a little too obviously drawn, at the end.

I did get to finish it while sitting in my beach chair in the backyard, next to my lush garden, sunbathing. That was good.

pool

I'm afraid this was Rosie's favorite part of Upland. It's in the Marriott Express, which, I guess technically, is in Gas City, not Upland.

cute things

Rosemary is hitting my favorite age. As a babysitter and big sister, I always loved 18-36 months, and Rosemary at 17 months seems exceptionally cute. Her vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds. In the last week or two she started using her first personal pronoun, saying things like, "I juice," "I down," and "I go." Two of the cutest, though:

--Yesterday we boarded our flight in Cincinnati and were then told that our pilot's incoming flight was delayed and he wasn't even on the ground yet. At one point while we waited, Rosie threw her hands above her head and said, "Airplane Up!"

--People - I should say, strangers, - always smile and wave to Rosie. Yesterday when someone smiled, I said to Rosemary, "She's saying hi. You can say hi, too, if you want to." Rosie burrowed her head into my shoulder and said to me, "Shy." I didn't even know that she knew the word. So now I'm working on teaching her "friendly".

24 of 52

I'm a sucker for a memoir, or a good personal narrative, especially one about A)food, B) religion, or C)food as a kind of religion. (Recommendations, off hand, for food memoirs: Julie and Julia, Under the Tuscan Sun, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and the next on my shelf is Heat; and for spiritual memoirs try Donald Miller, Anne Lamott, Lauren Winner, and (most of all) Kathleen Norris. Maybe Joan Didion is the best of all to read when it comes to memoirs, though.)

Molly Wizenberg is best known as the creator of Orangette, a blog I read occasionally but not regularly. Last Labor Day weekend when Katie and Elliott came to visit, we visited Delancey, the pizza joint that Molly and her husband started.

What finally got me to read her book was actually her recent columns for Bon Appetit, and the book itself is like a collection of those columns - recipes paired with personal stories and reflections - organized around a tighter narrative. (Did you know she met her husband through her blog? She did.) She has a delightful writing style.

Do you have a favorite memoir or autobiographical personal narrative?

happy birthday to me (day five, and six)

We had chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, and then we picked up some picnic supplies and settled in at the brand new Brooklyn Bridge Park. It was beautiful.






But, first, of course - how could I forget - we rode the TRAIN, Rosemary's second favorite thing about new york (tied with the fountains and the pigeons, and second only to aunt and uncle walker):




But, back to the park:





And then we walked across the bridge into Manhattan and took the train home as it started to rain.


At home we ate some delicious pound cake and played Settlers of Catan while Rosie napped. They let me win. And I finished my book. We ate dinner at Roebling Tea Room. And went home and watched Glee.




This was my best day in New York.

On Wednesday Jack and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art while Katie and Elliott babysat for us. We loved the Met and would like to go back again and again. Our flight back to Seattle was delayed, and we were at the airport and on the plane for far too long, arriving at sea-tac around 3 am. But let's not talk about that.

What a great vacation.

suddenly, ain't i pretty (day four)

On Monday Katie had to go to work. We went into the city to meet her for lunch at John's Pizza, and followed that with some gelato. Kate went back to work, and Elliott walked us from Washington Square Park to Tompkins Square Park, where Rosie stripped down to her diaper and sandals and played in the water. Parts of the Village reminded me of Paris, and I loved it.

concrete jungle where dreams are made (day three)

Sunday was another scorcher for this family of pale Seattlites. We ate blueberry scones, bought iced coffee, and walked down to the East River Park (where the video of Elliott and Rosemary, below a few posts, was taken).

Then a couple of excellent babysitters took over our daughter and the four of us took a cruise, saw lady liberty up close and personal.



That evening we visited RezPres (which you may know as the Welcome Wagon church) and ate Mexican food.

no time at all, just the new york times (day two)

On Saturday we hit the ground running after a breakfast of buttermilk biscuits and scrambled eggs. Rosemary loved the subway. When she saw a train coming, she kicked her legs and squealed.

We walked through Central Park, ate at Shake Shack, and visited the animals in the Central Park zoo.






To cool off and rest, we went to the movies! Rosemary enjoyed watching "Babies".

Then, since we were in Manhattan, we also saw some sights - Times Square, Rockefeller Plaza, the library and Bryant Park... you know. We stopped at Dean and Deluca to refresh ourselves, then hopped a train back to Brooklyn.




Katie and Elliott had tickets to a show in the city, so Jack spent the evening finishing up his last paper (ever! congrats to the grad!) and I got to start reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

more detail than you need about our trip (day one)

First of all, many thanks to Dad for buying us plane tickets and to Katie and Elliott for being such generous and gracious hosts.

Rosemary was a champion traveler.


Upon our arrival in Williamsburg, Katie and Elliott plied us with farm-fresh strawberries and apple juice, mixed up some dark&stormy's, and took us to the roof to point out the sights of the city.






Then they cooked us a beautiful dinner (and I learned how to make risotto, Katie's specialty!). We walked through McCarren Park for some ice cream, and then went back to watch Friday Night Lights.

Bryant Park

We visited a lot of parks, and the fountains in them were probably one of Rosie's favorite things about New York. You can see J, K, and L in the upper left hand of this video.

(At first, I couldn't remember why Bryant Park was so familiar to me. And then I remembered Project Runway.)

Uncle Elliott

At a park in Williamsburg, Rosie practices jumping and Elliott shows that he knows how to handle a baby.

23 of 52

We went to New York for my birthday, and I'll post about that as soon as I can decide which photos and videos are my favorites. It might take a while. It was a wonderful trip, although for two nights I couldn't fall asleep because (of the three hour time difference and because) I was thinking of Lisbeth Salander. I just love this trilogy, and I love that I got to finish this book on my birthday. It was a satisfying end. And then Katie and I couldn't stop thinking about the best people to cast in the movie version if Hollywood decides to remake it (it looks like the Swedes already made it pretty perfectly).

22 of 52

Some of the best poetry I have read in a while. I had marked a couple to share with you, but the book was overdue at the library and so I returned it.

21 of 52

March Violets is the first book in the Berlin Noir trilogy. I barely finished it in time to get it back to the library before we go to New York tomorrow.

my book group