Tragedy on a Friday, Beauty on Saturday, Samba on Sunday


Friday could have been a tragedy in the most superficial, trivial sense of the word. I was to meet a guy out that I had met online for just a drink or two. We had rescheduled from the week before. I reached our destined rendezvous at the appointed time. The only woman at the bar, I drank a beer very slowly when this very young guy sat next to me. You from round here? No – why? I’m just trying to figure out what to do around here. Oh, I can tell you some things. We started chatting – he’s telling me about living in Montana – Twin Falls. Are there really falls there? Well, they’re call damns these days. His parents from Wyoming. Mine from Colorado. We’re talking about tragedy in our families, bones disease, cancer, deafness. He has two brothers who are deaf. What are the chances of that?! That’s why we moved to Twin Falls – they have a deaf school. The very young and tragic death of his sister-in-law to cancer. Only 28. My brother and her – two peas in a pod. Middle child syndrome. We’re supposed to be peace keepers. To more personal stuff - Don’t you want to have kids – oh, I don’t know. I think I left my biological clock in a bar somewhere a few years back. Yeah, I'm only 24 - I don't even have a career yet. And on and on. He was in town to get a job and would spend the days, when he wasn’t on job interviews getting lost and trying to find his way back to his brother's place in Ballard. I was really doing all I could not to get lost. Your date here yet? Nope - and I've been here an hour. So we left, the two of us, new to town, went out and shot pool at the Garage Bar, drank a few beers, talked about all the places to explore in the city – he dropped me back off at my car. We thwarted an evening that could have been trivial and tragic but we managed to have a fantastic time – as new people in town.

Saturday was a simply beautiful day. 60 degrees. I clamored out of bed to make the most of the sunny day. Spilling coffee all over my hands, I head out into the day cursing. Discovery Park was my destination. I made my way there (without really getting lost), parking in the South Parking Lot, on to the Loop, down toward the sandy bluff where children picnicked with their parents, Labs and Beagles on leaches chases after one another. It was the most beautiful of beautiful. The Cascades had just enough snow on them to make them majestic. Rainier was tucked behind the city in all of her glory. Barges full of merchandise from China sliced through the Sound as if pulled by invisible string. Toy sail boats bobbed around on the steel blue water. It couldn’t, honestly, be more beautiful.

Saturday followed the order of things and flowed into Sunday. I had my usual morning walk with Shay and Pygmy at Green Lake. Pyg and I then headed back over to Discovery Park. Four hours in the sun. Delicious. We headed back to our respected abodes for lunch. I threw open the windows and clean my apartment before my friend Christine showed up at 3 p.m. We’re going to Neumo’s next Saturday for Carnival – Brazilian Marti Gras. She needed to make a costume and we did just that. Running from JoAnns to Displays and Costumes, we gathered feathers, sequins, a pizza and a bottle of red wine and for three hours while listening to Samba music, eventually switching to Cuban Rap we sewed, ate dinner and laughed. At one point, thread and feathers strewn all over the place, completely slap-happy (sewing for three hours straight will do that to you), Christine shouted with complete shock, I look like a drag queen! Her green and yellow head piece didn’t, suddenly, look right with everything else. After we wiped away our silly tears, she decided that indeed the head piece was gorgeous and, yeah, we were going to be stunning on Saturday.