Bellingham Adventures

Monday, November 22, Tacoma WA was hit with a blizzard that made the local roads treacherous. I could hear sirens most of the morning; my foray out to return library materials was aborted due to ice. [Usually snow in the morning melts by the afternoon.] I had decided to travel to Bellingham for Thanksgiving week with my daughter, going early in the week to be able to visit with my niece and her nearly three-year-old boy while they were in town. As my finances are gravely restricted, my sister bought us train tickets. It was dicey catching a cab to the train station, due to high demand, but we made it early and had a pleasant evening ride to Bellingham. The train halted many times on leaving stations, to send the conductors out to clear the switches.

My first view of Bellingham was of sheets of ice on the roads, which my sister and family navigated with ease, whether walking or driving. I was terrified of falling, and reminded why I moved away from Eastern Washington. Our visit was wonderful, and our longest visit since my sister married and moved away in 1968. We revisited our childhood, trying to solve mysteries explaining my peculiar emotional roadblocks: since Jean is about 7 years older, she was in a position to observe what went on in the family while I was an infant. We compared notes. This was illuminating and healing.

Tuesday my daughter and I, along with Jean and my niece and great-nephew, visited my nephew Robin and his twins who are just about 2 1/2. He has a daughter and a son, as well as a thirteen year-old stepson. Three toddlers playing with trains on wooden tracks in the living room. This is the first age where they were able to interact, not just parallel playing. I had brought a small frog puppet from Teaching Toys in my pocket, not sure when the time would come for him to make an appearance.

The two boys, Paul and Hewson, made an instant male bond on our arrival, and disappeared into the bedroom, leaving Hazel alone and bereft. Suddenly a frog tapped Hazel on the shoulder and they were instant, delighted friends.

This house was delightful, purple on the exterior, purple, lavender, lime green on the inside, with wooden dulcimer, mandolin and so forth on the walls and a concertina on the very piano that was in my house while I was growing up. It has found a noble home. In the kitchen was a gas stove [how I miss cooking with gas!] and a butternut and delicata squash on the counters. I felt quite at home.

At the Thanksgiving table with ten family and friends, all adults, I realized there was one person with Cerebral Palsy, a very bright and intelligent young man; someone with Parkinson's, someone with a past brain injury, and someone with Autism who communicated with a lettered board. With her mother assisting her by stabilizing her hand while she spelled out words, I thought there was a slight Ouija Board aspect to the process, but it worked. She mainly wanted to return to the motel for peace and quiet, which I could relate to. But quite a bit of medical diversity.

Friday we returned by train, this time by daylight. I tend to assume that Amtrak tracks will meander by themselves off into the wilderness so there will be a lot of scenery to look at. While the train does follow the coastline and we could look out across the ocean at groups of plovers [?], white-headed ducklike birds resting in flocks on the waves, and cormorants perching on poles in the water, we also saw a lot of backyards sporting household detritus, antique autos in various states of repair, and so forth.

At Tacoma again, we called another cab and I returned just in time to turn around and head out to a Holy Day observance called the Day of the Covenant, which is celebrated because the Center of the Covenant, 'Abdu'l-Baha, did not wish His birthday celebrated, and appointed this day in lieu of that. We read some tablets concerning the Covenant in the Baha'i Faith, unique for the first world religion to have a written covenant securing the succession of the heads of the Faith and preventing the Faith from splitting into countless warring sects.

It has been a wonderful journey and a break from the stress and strain of continual job-hunting.