SEATTLE — When I was little, the drive from our house on Capitol Hill to West Seattle seemed to take so long, it was like a trip to another state — and this was before Seattle had traffic. We went several times a year to Aunt Edith’s — my mom’s aunt and the de facto matriarch of that side of the family, a warm, no-fuss woman who loved us and, I found out years later, loved poetry.
Even then, I knew this trip also involved time travel. Aunt Edith’s house was a dream of a split-level midcentury, with glass blocks surrounding the front door and a magical push-button countertop range, separate from the oven set in the kitchen wall. There was always a bowl of hard candy, to which children could help themselves, and always Uncle Jack, taciturn in his leather recliner. The carpet was luxuriously wall-to-wall, the furniture regal, antique. The house always smelled, tantalizingly, like the dinner to come.
My brother and I would play in the basement, putting together our older cousin Johnny’s ancient Hot Wheels set. Dinner happened at a specified time, not just whenever it was ready, at the table with its linens instead of paper napkins, its pretty china. Aunt Edith’s cooking was different from ours — we had pesto, she had pot roast. She made things like deviled eggs, wiggly and delicious, and twice-baked potatoes, ethereally creamy and piped with fluted edges back into their jackets. More magic!
The light at Aunt Edith’s house had a different quality. There was a view, in the distance down the hill, of the glinting water of Puget Sound. The hours there, afternoons shading into evenings, lasted longer, halcyon. On the drive back, I’d fall asleep in the car, and my dad would carry me up the stairs and tuck me into bed. Later, I’d pretend I was asleep in order to get carried, until I got too big.