The Pontificators

In the days of dust and river clams we left our home in search of Emerald cities. Brief, sporadic visits to red-haired aunts, old pictures, and gift shop posters told us of sparkling lakes, shining towers, Pike Place Market (rows of shining produce; dad’s perennial gravitation to the magic shop), the fountain (the nozzles of firemen’s hoses!), the boats, the piers, the aquarium, and the Olde Curiosity Shop, packed like brown sugar with people and t-shirts and sneakers and cameras on leashes around necks.

This was the mid ‘90’s. Home was hot cracked dirt. We girls were tan (brown little berries, my grandmother called us) and broad shouldered from daily swim practices. We were loud and running in the yard, begging for the grass to stay long; its tall waves made hiding places, secret homes for tiny people, rice paddies in Japan that we tended with care. We hung freshly tie-dyed shirts on the clothesline and watched the colors fly, flags of paint and vinegar. The shirts grew stiff with sun.

At the top of the Space Needle the wind was strong. My bangs, thick and brush-like, chlorine-killed in those days, stood straight up in exclamation. Side by side, parents and baby sister behind us, tie-dyed shirts, we grinned wild into the camera with the city reaching out, breathing in the strong water scent through flaring nostrils, open mouths. This was living! This was life!