After an unexpected stop in Minneapolis – and I still cannot believe nobody on the Alaska Airlines flight has thrown a tantrum after this late-evening delay; the passengers are eerily polite, and my seat mate commiserates in a civilized manner as I make do with my Panera takeaway and those stray gummy dinosaurs from the Smithsonian that I’d fished out from a pocket – we arrive in the Emerald City.
My friend – having waited overlong, bless her – picks me up, and we eventually make our way to the lakeside Even Hotel. Despite the lateness of the hour, the lady at the reception desk is irrepressibly cheerful and efficient, and I almost feel bad for not matching her (and, let’s be honest, the hotel’s) energy.
It is the end of a long trip and almost the end of my holiday energy, and so I dispense with the hikes and the beaches and the parks, and linger in town. The cold is bracing, a sharp clear counterpoint to the soft mild sunlight that occasionally filters through skies that shift from slate to powder blue to rose. I should have worn gray or navy wool to match the weather; instead I float in bright scarlet among the men in puffer jackets loping along the sidewalk, women who helpfully give directions. I buy Christmas presents at Sephora, and snatch work-friendly wrap dresses at Nordstrom Rack; I am tempted to go on a ‘green’ tour just for kicks, but the last two weeks are catching up with me and the impending return to work looms large and ominous (already the messages and emails intrude relentlessly from 14 hours in the future), so I give up on the pot.
Instead I content myself with going out on Halloween, gawking at the Space Needle and visiting Pike Place Market, happily dawdling around the food stalls and bookshops in search of Ursula K. Le Guin, with a piroshky from a Russian bakery in one hand and a caramel macchiato from the original Starbucks store in the other.
That was my second-favourite memory.
My favourite one is of dinner with a pair of women I’ve been friends with since we were teenagers under the tutelage of the nuns. The world is so very small – how do two girls from the same high school clique in our little corner of Asia end up in the same city in the Pacific Northwest? We giggle over roti and chicken butter masala, and it is not much different from giggling in between classes all those years ago, in our white blouses and green pleated skirts.
All too soon it is time to make the long trek back across the Pacific (snacks in my coat pocket just in case), and as the plane thunders off the runway, I say goodbye to America and tell myself I’ll be back next year.
(Miss Corona had other plans, though.)
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