I scramble to get ready. I'm one of those individuals that like the idea of rising very early, but I make a nasty habit of staying up until 2 am nearly every day, so rising at 5:30 am is difficult. It is a work day, but I am committed to driving my sister to the doctor for a 7:15 am appointment in Northgate in North Seattle. |
Galloping Gertie |
I head north down to the I-90 freeway, down Mercer Island's center arterial, Island Crest Way. Mercer Island is a strange place; a town which isn't really a town but more of a resort village, an island in the middle of a fresh water lake which is in the middle of a metropolitan/urban area that sits on the salt water Puget Sound. |
There was a grand hotel on the island a hundred years ago, the Calkins Hotel on the north end. There are no remains of last century Victorian elegance on the island now, only modern multimillion dollar homes. The Calkins Hotel burned down in 1908, after several uneasy years as, variously, a hotel, a school for delinquents where nearby residents often complained of "boys chained to the fence", and the Seattle Sanitorium, when drug addicts were once "treated by administering a great many enemas and laxatives."
Calkins Hotel, Mercer Island, Washington
The average per capita income on this island is estimated at the seventh highest income in Washington State, whatever that means. The island , or the city, according to Wikipedia "has a total area of 34.0 km² (13.1 mi²). 16.5 km² (6.4 mi²) of it is land and 17.4 km² (6.7 mi²) of it (51.33%) is water." It's a very homogenous place. I'm bemused by the existence of some of the more well-known residents of this island...Michael Medved, Daniel Lapin, an Abramoff buddy, and of course, Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen. I'm tracing around to the notion my kids have pressed upon me – we shouldn't have moved back here. We are out of sync with this place both financially and politically; convenience and less commute time aside, we were happier in the Central District of Seattle. But I moved back here at a time a year and a half ago when decisions were tough. I needed "easy" and "known", as opposed to "new" and "different". I think about this as I coast down Island Crest Way to the entrance of I-90, set aside as an HOV lane in the mornings westbound; as an island resident, I have the privilege of driving as a one-occupant vehicle into Seattle, and this time I'm grateful for the convenience, not guilty.
Lacey V. Murrow | I'm on the Lacey V. Murrow bridge that crosses between Mercer Island and Seattle. The Murrow bridge, named after Lacey Murrow who was the second Director of Highways of Washington, and also the brother of Edward R. Murrow, Keith Olberman's hero, gives me pause on the best of days with the best of weather. I recall the sinking of part of the bridge in 1990, an unexpected event caused by water damage to the concrete floating pontoons during construction. Another parallel bridge was in place at the time, and the part that sunk was already closed for the construction. Once in awhile, when I squirt out of the I-90 tunnel and glide onto the deck of the bridge from either city side or island side, I envision sinking segments of the bridge and the easy drive across is a bit more menacing, especially on a dark night. |
Murrow was also the Director of Highways at the time the first Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge opened for traffic in July of 1940. "Galloping Gertie" fell apart in high winds in November of that year, just months later. I heard about "Gertie" a lot in my childhood, as my father was on the banks of the Narrows on the Kitsap side, when the bridge fell.
Galloping Gertie in November 1940
A curious connection forms in my mind, as I ponder the Murrow brothers, both suffering from lung cancer at the time of their respective deaths. Edward R. died from it in 1965; his brother Lacey V. shot himself a year later in 1966, suffering in the late stages of the disease. A floating bridge, in a floating world, was named in 1967 after the man responsible for getting the massive and innovative floating bridge completed and opening a better route to a lake-bound island accessible formerly by ferryboat. The manner of death should not define the man, and Murrow was a man of many accomplishments; Brigadier General in the Air Force in WWII, holder of a "presidential citation with four cluster decorations, the Legion of Merit, the Order of the British Empire, and the Croix de Guerre", and assertive advocate of better, more efficient transportation in a state that was sorely in need of transportation infrastructure. I do wonder how often a suicide victim is memorialized in the naming of a bridge.
I spin my way off of the end of I-90 and circle around between Safeco Field and Qwest Field, to drive onto the southern end of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, another transportation challenge of downtown Seattle, and a bone of contention in the mind of any voter who gives a damn about the future of a livable Seattle. I leave this sensitive issue alone, as I roll the driver's side window down. I always open the car window when I'm on the viaduct. There is a hint of salt-sea air in the mist from the early morning concrete-colored Elliot Bay. The viaduct gives a driver the feeling they are on a crazy concrete go-kart track; little or no shoulder and narrow lanes and other cars traveling 70 miles an hour when the speed is a posted too high 50 mph. It's a crapshoot to drive on this elevated passage – the odds of the viaduct falling in an earthquake in an earthquake-prone area are 1 in 20. I'm a too fast driver generally and even I must forcefully submerge my nerves as I speed along under the looming threat of earthquakes and the spontaneous accident-prone entrance of drivers from the short on-ramp up ahead. Not too much traffic this morning, and I flit to the inside lane, steering and gazing left to the water. A chancy risk to take, but the view is always enthralling. I think of Seymour Glass, of "A Perfect Day for Bananafish", and his habit of watching the trees alongside the road as he drives. I live dangerously.
the Alaskan Way Viaduct
I slide through the Battery Street tunnel and think of the cars on overhead Mercer street, and the old timbers and drifting pulverized concrete dust that settles down into the tunnel from the crumbling macadam above. I'm on Aurora now, driving north, past tawdry, dying early 60's motels built to accommodate 1961 World's Fair crowds. I was three years old in 1961 and told my mother the stuffed polar bear in glass on the observation deck of the Space Needle spoke to me.
Now across the Aurora bridge, where people have jumped from and buses have careened off of in recent years. I swing down the exit on the north end of the bridge and turning left onto 35th, I make my way across the Fremont neighborhood to Leary Avenue, then to Ballard.
the Aurora Bridge in Seattle
I travel against the early morning commuter traffic, bees on their way downtown to the work hive. The drive is getting easier, but not faster. It's always slow in Ballard, a western land of ancient Scandinavians who drive with the left turn signal of their Mercury Comet eternally blinking and who have forgotten the ends of the old-fashioned seat belt prong that dangles and sparks on the pavement at 15 miles an hour. No real urgency in life for some, and this is how it should be.
I pull up to the front of the Tudor-style brick house in Ballard. My sister and nephew come to the car and climb in. I watch my sister for signs of illness and the clues are chillingly visible. Why had I not seen this before? Maybe I did. We talk of easy things on the way to the doctor; her daughter, my daughter, my work, politics – always politics, as she's started to listen more and more to AM 1090, the progressive station in town. We arrive at the enterologist and proceed to the waiting room. Not so much time passes before she's taken to the back, and I am left with Todd (Todd's story here). We have an hour and a half, so we go to McDonalds across the street for breakfast. He gets the Deluxe with milk, I'll take the Egg McMuffin, please, and coffee.
We eat and, as always, always, I'm mentally stunned by the effort it takes to monitor this 35 year old's behavior. He has the actions of a two year old, and I gently prod him to eat his breakfast and not spill his milk; I cut the pieces of his food into small parts, and wipe his mouth when he dribbles, I keep him from shredding the napkins and stop him from putting the empty plastic syrup box in his pocket, where he collects random bits of his daily life. It takes us an hour to eat breakfast. As always, I can't get my mind around the daily life of my sister over the course of the last 35 years.
We return to the doctor's office. Within a few minutes, a nurse comes out to usher me to the back. We do a dance in the waiting room; she returns to find another nurse to come out and sit with my nephew so that I can go back to see the doctor and my sister and hear what results were found. We wait, my sister and I, for a few minutes before the doctor returns. My sister's face is grim, but she has the presence and the sense of humor I counted on, as I tease her about her choice of clothes this morning, and she laughs. She's wearing her casual cornflower blue fleece jacket and a pair of periwinkle blue linen pants. Her skin tone is a restricted curb yellow. The contrast is startling in the muted flourescent light. We've often shared a gallows sense of humor in the past – but rarely, if ever, about each other.
There is twenty years between us, but we look at each other and we both think we know. But of course, we really don't. The doctor returns and launches carefully into a discussion of what he's found and how long it will take to get the biopsy results back. He's more anxious in appearance than we are, and I wonder how others take his news. Not so well, by the way in which he and a nurse gaze uncertainly at us as he speaks. My sister listens and thanks the doctor; I ask some questions that are answered carefully, and then we leave. We take custody of my nephew in the waiting room, remove the medical pamphlets that he's secreted in his pockets and give them back to the nurse. The other occupants in the waiting room smile as if they are in on the joke, as he grins and laughs in his mischevious way when he knows he's almost gotten away with a misdemeanor.
"May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day."
Delmore Schwartz – "Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day"
We retrace our route back to Ballard, passing the entrance of the cemetery where her husband and son, our sister, mother and father are all buried now. We talk about stupidity and choices and she tells me stories of being a child, tales I've heard hundreds of times before. But I listen and engrave them again in my mind. Between us over the years, we've filled in the gaps of our family stories that cross our two different generations. We've often compared notes on the stories our mother told us. We are the two storytelling siblings left of a family of storytellers and tall tale revisionists, remembering our history when other relatives have forgotten or no longer care.
The Flintstones Winston cartoon from 1961 - click the image.
On the way to her home of 37 years, she asks to stop at the Citgo station and she insists on paying for a tank of Venezualan regular gas for me. She wants me to go into the little shopping mart and buy her Winston lights. Two packs – a day's worth of death. Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.
Winston is a name deriving from the old saxon / Norse words "wynn" meaning "good" or "beautiful" and "stonn" meaning town or place.
I leave her at home with the assurance from her daughter that she will be getting off work to come home and help her mom out for the afternoon with my nephew, as my sister is too weak to watch over him. I leave Ballard and travel back through the older residential neighborhoods of lower Phinney, Fremont, Wallingford, and Montlake, where each ethnic wave of immigrants from the late 1800's up to now has found community and rebuilt their own version of American culture on new land. I merge onto the 520, the Evergreen Floating bridge and marvel at the undulations of the bridge's surface, as the bridge casts out its path across the choppy lake, the longest floating bridge in the world and slightly unsettled even on a near windless day.
The Evergreen Floating Bridge -- the 520
I cross to the eastside of Lake Washington. As I drive, anger hits me in waves as I hear another report on the radio about the Bush Administration and the Justice Department's maneuvering and reduction of the proposed $130 billion penalty down to $10 billion against tobacco companies, as confirmed by Sharon Eubanks, the prosecutor on the case. What that $120 billion might have meant to future smokers, young smokers who have never seen a lung cancer death, or viewed pictures from an autopsy done on a body wracked with emphysema and heart disease. Not that it matters to my sister now; at 68, she's smoked since she was ten years old.
"Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn."
Delmore Schwartz – "Calmly we walk through this April's Day"
I reach the parking lot at work in Redmond and I lock the car, lean against the rear bumper and pull the cigarette from my pocket. I cup my hand around the flame of the lighter and the unfiltered end, a brief respite before I start the workday.
Winston tastes good as a cigarette should.
"It occurs to me that we allow ourselves to imagine only such messages as we need to survive."
Joan Didion – The Year of Magical Thinking