Category: Seattle

8:53 AM: You are standing in a short line to get to the elevator. On your way, you pass many large poster boards with information about the space needle. Do you stop and read it? Nope! People are starting to cut you! You get to the front of the line. There is a nice lady taking the tickets. Your dad says he has online tickets and the woman taking the tickets says her boss doesn’t trust her with that level of responsibility. Your dad laughs. You move on to take a photo of you photoshopped in front of the space needle.

9:00 AM: You are going up an elevator with clear windows and you can see the whole beautiful city of Seattle. A tour guide is talking as you go up the elevator. He is explaining something, but you are not listening because you are too busy staring out the window at the mountains.

9:01 AM: You are suddenly jolted back to reality with a loud brrrrr, thump. You are on the top of the space needle. You immediately smell kettle corn and you automatically walk over to it. You scan the choices, ask your Dad, and before he even answers, you turn away. You know the answer. No.

9:03: You walk outside to the 360° balcony and you are greeted with a pleasant view of Seattle. You begin to trap the image in your head but before you can even finish taking your mental photo, you see your sister whip out her camera and shove it in your face. You decide to follow your sister’s wishes and take a few shots. Just as you are heading out, you quickly turn around and take your mental snapshot.

9:30: After a while on the balcony, you decide you want to go check out the spinning restaurant one floor down. This time you decide to go down the stairs. You count the stairs as you go down. 46 stairs. You are already at the restaurant. As you step into the restaurant, you realize something. It’s closed! Then you spot someone setting up tables. He tells you that they are closed but will be open in 3 minutes. You turn around and see about five more people who have wandered into the restaurant looking for reservations. Then you hear the person says that there are reservations only. You decide you didn’t hear that and go check out the spinning outside rim of the restaurant. You stand on it and you slowly but surely move around the outside rim of the room. You see the beautiful view out the window again and just as you suck in another view your dad calls out to you that it is time to go.

9:45: You take a ride down the clear elevator yet again and are greeted with the Space Needle gift shop. Your dad says you can have 2 minutes and 30 seconds later he tells you it’s time to go.

Juniper was a great tour guide. Give a seven year old a job she can do, and she delivers! It took a bit of convincing to get her to go back to a place she had already been, but when she realized it meant another couple hours playing with Anika, she agreed. We grabbed a lyft to the gates of the park. “This way,” she told us, and walked us through the park towards the locks. 

Impeccable timing. We walked up to the locks just as the last small motor boat was loading in to the small lock, ready to head out to sea. After just a moment’s wait, we saw the back gates close. We ran to the front, ready to see the front gates open and let the boats free. It went down so fast! An elevator for boats, I didn’t realize how simple the locks actually are. I always wondered how they make the boats go up and down, but now that I’ve seen it, it’s so simple! They just let it drain slowly down to the lower water level, and down the boats go down like they are on a big floating elevator. The sea-side gates noisily opened up and let their caged passengers free. 

It took me a minute to figure out how they make the boats go back UP. They just let the lock fill from the higher river, that’s it! So simple. Paloma explained it to me – I think she’s a bit quicker than I am sometimes… 

“Where are the seals?” we asked. Juniper showed us where to look. We walked across the dam looking for them. Down the ramp we went, seeing the pattern of waterfalls on the way down, down to the observation area, like a real-life-wild-salmon aquarium. It was full of fish! We watched them for a while, and as the kids’ teacher this year, I dutifully took advantage of the science lesson splayed out for us on the wall: an illustrated essay about how the fish needed to swim upstream to their birthplace to make their babies. We played popcorn, reading different parts of the lesson. Even Juniper read a bit – the last line – after getting over her initial hesitations. I just remember a little bit: a map showing the 1,700+ rivers in the area. A call to action about how we could help the salmon be safer:

• Help limit city runoff
• Use fewer garden chemicals
• Use soaps with no phosphates
• Use absorbent mulch, not plastic tarps on the gardens, to help the earth soak up the rains
• Let trees grow over the rivers, so the fish can stay cool

I’m hoping the girls remember some of that, too. I think they will remember seeing the dozens of fish outside the ladders waiting for the energy to climb one more set of stairs upstream. Lucky for the fish, there were no seals surrounding for them. Just a flowing and peaceful river presenting a journey ahead.

In classic fashion, the journey back was at least as fun as the one there. Juniper showed us the hills across the river that were perfectly set up for rolling. She didn’t manage to convince a slightly tired and grumpy Paloma to climb up to the top, so we settled for a smaller hill with a climbing tree and a decent rolling place. And then the golden hour arrived and we snapped a few pictures of silly kids playing on the goose-poop littered lawn. Ew, gross. But fun! Cartwheels, handstands, fireman weaves, and playing princess in the shadows of the tall trees.

Once again, Seattle delivered.

Ok, they guy’s project was to use every color in the arsenal. You’ve got to love that – especially if you’re 10 or 12 years old, and the colors are bright, saturated and glossy like the biggest pieces of candy you’ve ever imagined. The guy is the AC⚡︎DC of the art world: nothing too deep, just pure power, emotion, delight. Go Big or Go Home!

The entrance should warn you, Gardens of Glass is actually a playground: CHILDREN REQUIRED TO ENTER. I thought it was pretty cool, pretty big and grand, but too many years of art school and snobby grown-up critique planted words like “gaudy” in my brain. Kids are the perfect remedy. They don’t have that handicap. They see it fresh, new eyes soaking up the pure chromatic saturation.

But remember, like a playground, approach it from down low. From the ground and it was even bigger, even better. He designed the place to be viewed from 3 feet low. Dale made it larger than life, so get down on the ground and make it larger again.

Go dude, you nailed it. Sometimes too much is too much. And sometimes it’s not. Make it Big, make it crazy, make it horrible, make it beautiful. Use those bright colors. Use all of them, and then envelop us with them.

ok rachel. I’m glad you’re alive. That was a scare yesterday. You bit that spoon in half.

I did not like that one bit, seeing your body slump on the floor and stop answering me. I was glad to still be in the US, to still have Google health insurance (for a few more days…) to be with friends who can help. I was glad you kept breathing, I was glad you woke up, snapped back out of it and talked to me again. I was glad the EMTs were kind, and careful. I was glad for the people at Swedish Ballard, for Cindy your Nurse, and that we beat the rush. I was glad that the Doctor’s 26 point exam didn’t find anything, and the CT scan didn’t either.

I was glad you nagged the kids about their manners tonight at dinner, and made a few demands afterwards too. You’re feeling stronger again.

I love you. Please don’t do that again. I want you just the way you are.