Sleepless For Seattle

Maybe it's because I was born there, or maybe because I spent nearly my whole adolescence there, it's where I consider I actually "grew up", transitioning from a child to an adult.  I don't know, but what I do know is that my heart belongs in Seattle.  I like to say it's the atmosphere of the entire Puget Sound area that makes me long to be there.  Tall pine trees and misty rain scented air haunt my dreams.  I know that's when I'm overdue for a visit.

Mike & I never thought we'd end up here in Eastern Washington.  It's strange how lives work themselves out, isn't it?  Not only were we married here, but somehow Mike landed a job here that would ultimately save our lives as we knew it.  Then, miracle of miracles occurred and we ended up having a baby here!  We have been here almost 6 years already--longer than we've been anywhere else in our lives together, and the funny thing is, we never intended on staying this long.  The plan was always to work a while, get back on our feet and then go back to Seattle again to settle in for the long haul.  

When we first met, Michael was smitten with Seattle, since it was the city where he first met me and so associated me with.  It wasn't long after we were engaged that we felt we should move there where we would have children and make it our home.  Easier said than done, however, because sadly my husband lost his really great job in LA and we were forced to leave.  I quit school and we packed up our things and drove to my parent's new place in Idaho where they had ironically only just moved to from Seattle.  My grandmother lived in Idaho, so my parents figured after all their kids left, they should leave too.  We spent the next year & a half living there with them.  It was then that we were married.  A year after our wedding, we decided to make the move to Seattle.  Mike accepted a job at the library there in Snohomish county and I enrolled into school again.  We thought we could make it, but fate had other plans.  It was our infertility that failed us.  That was where we first began treatment and realized it was not covered under health insurance only after we had gotten the bill.  We quit treatment, but the bills didn't go away.  We still owed them in a big way, and they eventually drove us into the ground in debt and we had to find a way out.  The job in Eastern WA was that answer to our pleas.  It was too good to turn down, and we knew it would save us from a lifetime of debt and wars and consolidation programs, so we moved, leaving our beloved Seattle behind us.  

Six long years and one daughter later, we are aching to go back.  There are plenty of reasons we've felt this push to move again, one of which is Mike's job.  Over the years it has become exactly what we had hoped it wouldn't be when we moved here.  It has lost it's stability.  City budget cuts have more than once threatened his job to the point that last year they actually went as far as to inform him that come January, he wouldn't have his job anymore!  The only thing that saved it was the fact that one of his coworkers decided to take her retirement at the end of the year, granting her position to Mike when she left.  So, for the time being, he is still there, but for how long, we don't know.  You would think that plenty of reason to pick up and leave, but there are other things that are keeping us from jumping up and moving so abruptly.  What makes this such a hard decision is that during the last 6 years, my parents decided to move from Idaho to a little town in Oregon, just 20 minutes from here so that they could be close to us as well as my grandparents who live nearby, too.  It's the fact that we just had a baby that makes me feel so sentimental about being near them.  I know my parents (especially my mom) want to be close to their grandchildren, and I want that too.  It's not just that they are a great place to turn to when we need a babysitter or something, but the fact that they are nearby means they get to watch them grow up and share in their lives so much more than if we were living far away.  I guess you could call me selfish for wanting all my family to move back to Seattle too so that I could stop feeling guilty about moving there.

It's not just my family that stops us, though.  It's our daughter.  We felt that we should wait at least a year after her birth before moving anywhere out of town because, first, we want her to have stable health insurance to get her through her first year since that is the most frequent doctor visited year of a child's life.  Second, we just feel that it would be cruel to move her away from her grandparents right now, the second after she is born.  They've waited all these long years right along with us, and that just wouldn't be fair.  Lastly, I just can't see us jumping the gun and moving back to Seattle just because we want to so bad.  We have to be adult about this and think realistically about our chances of survival so that we don't fall into the same financial trap as before.  Seattle is a beautiful and bountiful city, but it is also more expensive than Eastern WA.  Regardless if we buy a house or rent, we'll be paying more than what we pay now, and although we're doing okay, we are already barely scraping by these days. 

So, there is a goal in all this nonsense.  That is to make Seattle our home after a year or two.  It of course depends on the circumstances that befall us, but if all goes as planned, perhaps we'll be in the emerald city by the time our daughter is a toddler.  It's scary, exciting, bittersweet, and thrilling all at once to think of making that change.  I'll miss my parents, I'll miss Andy's Market where I buy most of my veggie meats and fresh local vegetables.  I'll even miss the real seasons of Eastern WA, like sweltering summers, blustery falls, and crunchy frozen winters (spring here is moist and drippy like every season in Seattle, so I won't miss that)!  But it seems worth it all to have the things we've been longing for since we moved away.  These small towns aren't at all as vibrant as life is on the west side.  We love to be out and about, experiencing the world and living life to the fullest.  Seattle has it all for us.  It's full of life and things to do.  This valley is a retirement town.  Seattle is full of young people our age, giving us a greater potential to have friends.  I've never not wanted to live there, and I miss it everyday.  Now the thought of living there is even greater because of my daughter.  I want nothing more than for her to grow up in a place as wonderful as that.  The only thing that would perfect that life would be to have my family close by again.