I'm heading up to Seattle tomorrow. My daughter, Martina, is starting a master's program at Seattle University and I'm going to help her get settled into her new apartment. I am so excited for her!  She has worked extremely hard to get to this point in her life and I know she is going to absolutely rock this MFT program! I couldn't be more proud. 

At the same time, I'm feeling a completely different set of emotions around what returning to this city means to me. It's crazy for me to think that I am the same age now as my own mother was when she flew up to Seattle to find me playing my violin on the street. A couple months earlier, I had left my home in Berkeley, California in the middle of the night and nobody knew where I was or if I was even alive. A cousin of mine who lived in Washington happened to be watching a news story on TV about something that had happened in downtown Seattle when the camera panned past me playing the violin in front of Nordstrom's. My cousin recognized me and called my parents right away. They were on the earliest flight they could get.

I'm really curious to discover what it will be like for me to be back in Seattle after such a long time. I mean really!! It's crazy. I was literally a baby doing crazy things, living a crazy life. What memories will being there conjure up? I'm honestly a bit scared. There are things that I did then that I'm not very proud of, and what will happen if I come face to face with some of my demons? There's only one way to find out.

If Seattle is anything like San Francisco or even Berkeley, it has changed a lot since I was there. I might not even recognize any of it. Well, there is Nordstrom's. I don't imagine that store would be gone. I played under an awning. People were kind, I recall. Many smiled. Stopped and listened. Left me money. 

And then there was my mother. I remember that day.  I saw her approach from a distance, tentatively at first and then when we made eye contact she broke into a run.