Today after church, we drove to Seattle for brunch at Portage Bay Cafe. We haven't been there since we had Isaac; I think the last time we ate there was Father's Day when I was pregnant in 2009. It was predictably busy, although we were seated immediately because we agreed to a table on the covered outdoor patio.
"It's not heated," our hostess said, "but we have blankets, and there is some sun..."
The morning was chilly and breezy and swinging between overcast and partly sunny, but it didn't seem too cold and we had jackets. And, in fact, there were heavy woven blankets draped over the back of each chair. Suzannah immediately wanted to be wrapped in one, and she snuggled into her chair, announcing that she was "so cozy." Brunch itself was lovely. The kids ate pancakes -- Portage Bay has an amazing pancake bar, although Suzannah only wanted whipped cream, and Isaac didn't want any toppings or fruit at all, preferring to make short work of his pancake by shoving fistfuls in his mouth. Matt enjoyed the specialty hash with grilled organic vegetables and sautéed mushrooms, and I had migas -- a tortilla stuffed with seasoned eggs, cheese, basil, and salsa, topped with avocado. And, because it is Mother's Day, I ordered a mimosa. Delightful.
It was all a little chaotic, as meals with our little ones often are; Matt wound up holding Isaac for much of the meal when he tired of his high chair and nearly wound up with a tiny shoe in his eggs more than once. Suzannah wanted one of the toys we'd brought for Isaac, insisting that he didn't want to play with it and could we please give it to her now (nevermind the fact that Isaac was happily dunking it in Matt's water glass). You know, the usual commotion. I like to think I'm pretty good at staying relaxed even when it's impossible to do something as simple as sit at a table and peacefully eat my own meal for more than two minutes without balancing one child and placating another. Mostly, we all leave fed and happy, and if Matt and I can both stay at the table the entire time -- as opposed to taking turns walking with a restless toddler -- I consider it a success.
After we left the restaurant, I had a "surprise" trip to the Elliott Bay Book Company, which is pretty much always my favorite gift for any occasion. I left with two books: The Devil's Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea and Kristin Lavrandsdatter by Sigrid Undset, the latter of which is a huge behemoth of a novel and which I am determined to read this summer.
We've actually never gone to Portage Bay by ourselves; our first visit was nearly four years ago when my friend Colleen was in town for a weekend and we met here there for breakfast with Suzannah, who was then just a bit younger than Isaac is now. I was thinking about that first visit today, and it occurs to me that my memories become sweeter over time because they piggy-back on each other. I can't separate this visit from that one, when Suzannah ate her first seasoned fried potato and decided it was to her liking. Likewise, every visit to the Elliott Bay Book Company carries the memory of that first visit, when I made my sweaty midsummer pilgrimage with my parents and Aaron and Morgan after a couple of hours at Pike Place Market. I bought Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, which I read in the cooler, darker fall. (And I remember the afternoon when that book really pulled me in, pulled me in and didn't spit me back out until I read the last page the next day; it was a Friday after school, and I drove to the Poverty Bay cafe and ordered a huckleberry mocha and curled up in a chair in the corner and stayed there almost until closing.) And even though the bookstore has moved, when I order a coffee in the cafe I think about ordering coffee in the old basement cafe, writing in a journal or making reading lists. Somewhere in each visit is the memory of wandering the stacks with an infant in a sling or the Ergo, or with a toddler in a stroller. I had a similar moment last weekend in REI, buying running shoes; I happened to glance over at the little restaurant -- World Wrapps -- next to the play area, where Suzannah was climbing up in the tree house with a bunch of other kids. And suddenly I wasn't only a mother of two, holding her toddler son's hands while he lurched around the playroom and calling a cheerful "Yes, I see you!" to the five-year-old brave enough to go down the twisty slide on her own now; I was also the nineteen-year-old about to step on a plane bound for Alaska, where I would spend the next three months working at a fishing lodge. I still remember the Saturday afternoon before my Monday-morning flight; I was shopping with my parents and brother and aunt and uncle and cousins, and I ducked into a back corner of the cafe with my journal (it was purple, and spiral-bound) and a stack of stationary and spent the better part of an hour writing and sipping a smoothie called a Tropical Storm (they still have it) and looking out the huge windows at the view of the city, feeling completely disoriented, knowing that the next day I would trade that view for a very different one, and both of those were very different than the view from, say, my bedroom in Bozeman or my dorm room in Minnesota.
That same afternoon last weekend, we stopped for coffee at Vivace across the street. It's a fairly new location, not the same one Matt and I first discovered on Broadway back in 2001, but the coffee smells the same; it's a particular aroma that evokes spirals of memories that pre-date even our marriage. I sat with my little family and sipped my latte and shared bits of cookie with my daughter and remembered the countless Saturday afternoons Matt and I spent at the old one, sitting at those marble counters. I graded stacks and stacks of sophomore essays there. We sat there together writing thank-you cards the week after our wedding. I scrawled endless lesson plans, letters, and journal entries while sipping White Velvets. Sometimes I feel so far away from those weekends of my early-twenties, immersed in my new teaching job; I look back and wonder how I filled my time and marvel at our freedom to get up on a Saturday and do whatever we wanted at the drop of a hat, and yet I remember so distinctly the sense of desperation I felt -- would this be the weekend in which I would catch up on my life and sail confidently into Monday morning? The juxtaposition of those memories on the now of my life is a little disorienting and very immediate.
And then at brunch today, Matt and I discussed travel plans for this summer and I found myself thinking about last summer's drive to Minneapolis, about how every road trip to Montana or Minnesota builds on the memories of the road trips before; every cup of coffee from a familiar drive-thru stand, every meal eaten during a break at a favorite roadside restaurant, is reminiscent of a trip we took in 2003 or 2006 or 2010. Remember when we stood outside at this gas station for what felt like forever, waiting for our dog to pee in the snow the first time we took her to Montana? Remember when we changed Suzannah in the car in Ellensburg the first time we took her on the road? How we played in the park in Miles City? (In 2007? 2009? 2010?) Remember how she fell and skinned her knees in Spokane, and the man at the coffee shop directed us to a store that sold really cool bandaids, and she plastered those all over her arms and legs and forehead between Bismarck and Dickinson, North Dakota? Remember when I had to change Isaac on the floor of the tiny bathroom in the Thai restaurant? Remember our stops at Vargos, at Zandbroz, at Atomic Coffee and the Leaf and Bean?
I remember specifics, of course. But when I try to recall my favorite memories I begin with imagery, rather than events, and soon I'm lost in a collage of moments, places, and feelings, all connected to very concrete sensations. The smell of White Rain shampoo, which reminds me of summer afternoons at the pool with my friend Julia -- the high school, or the water tower. The pine-scented air of Glacier National Park, the inside of the Cedar Tree gift shop, the way the pebbly shore of the lake feels under my bare feet. The smell of the oil we used to polish all of the wood walls at Rainbow King Lodge in Iliamna, Alaska. The Jergens bar soap in my grandparents' bathroom. It's not about any specific trip or summer day, but when I remember these things, I can place myself right there: My childhood bedroom, or the shore of Lake McDonald, or my grandparents' house. My favorite coffee shop in Bozeman, in Seattle, in Moorhead. The Thai restaurant in Ellensburg, or the hotel in Coeur d'Alene where we always take our longest bathroom break between here and Montana. Vivace, Pike Place Market, the Elliott Bay Brewery. This stretch of highway, that hotel.
I tried to identify a favorite memory today, and instead I thought about the things that make my memories sweet, the ways in which my senses collide to keep them close even as they blur and shift.
And when I kissed my children to sleep tonight, I was kissing them to sleep on an infinite number of nights, rocking them, tucking the blankets around them, singing softly and trying to hold the moment close, knowing how fleeting such moments are. And I wonder if, on Mother's Days many years from now, I'll dwell in memories of these moments -- awkward gluey creations, flowers, brunches here and there, sunny spring days -- with the same blurred yet very real and concrete appreciation of the moment in which I am blissfully present.
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