The West Yet Glimmers—Part 1

The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day:
Now spurs the lated traveler apace
To gain the timely inn;
—Macbeth III.iii

I was born and raised in Seattle—well, Ballard to be specific. My parents were Swedish immigrants. My father worked on the docks and on the fishing trawlers from the time they arrived until he retired. My mother was an education activist in the Swedish community, establishing a kindergarten program and teaching until she was forced out at 70 years old. That had been last year, and she wasn’t taking it that well. It’s a cruel twist of fate when a couple work all their lives toward their goal of retiring and traveling together and then something like a heart attack in the middle of the night a year after retirement dashes the dreams to pieces. Mom had been alone for nine years now.

We talk several times a week and I try to visit at least once a week, but the past two weeks had been so busy that I’d missed lunch with her last Sunday. When she saw me at the door she looked quizzically at me and asked “Yes?”

“Mom, it’s me, Dag.” Was she losing it?

“What happened to your hair?” I realized she hadn’t seen me clean shaven since I got out of the Navy and I’d completely forgotten that Sinclair had died my hair.

“I got a job. I have to look all corporate now.”

“A job? Why?”

“Well, Mom, I work for a living.”

“But your business was doing so well.” Now that was a twist. For the past year she’d been telling me I needed to clean up and get a job while I protested that I was in school and had started a business. She hadn’t been enthusiastic about me becoming an entrepreneur and I’d downplayed the real work, choosing to tell her I repaired computers. “Everyone has computers that need fixed. Mine never does what I tell it to.” That was because she’d never really liked the idea of a computer and didn’t bother to learn how to use it. But it was okay. As much as I thought I’d like to just jot off an email to her sometimes, she really didn’t need computing power. As easy as it was for the elderly to become prey on the Internet, I was just as glad her computer sat in a corner collecting dust.

I helped her on with her jacket and we went out to the waiting cab. I don’t drive my car much, and on rainy days not at all. As beautiful as the past four days had been, the wind and rain picked up again during the night and I nearly lost the umbrella I held over her head I held the door open for her. It was a short trip to the Salmon Bay Fish House on the other side of The Cut, but being a lazy Sunday, the driver was content to make short runs for locals. I asked him to pick us up at 2:00 and gave him a generous tip on the $7 fare.

Mom always liked to come to Salmon Bay. She could look out at the fishing boats moored at the pier. I think she liked to imagine that Dad would be getting off one of them and come to join us for brunch. I’d tried to take her to some of the other nice restaurants in town for Sunday brunch, but when asked, she always suggested Salmon Bay.

We talked about our weeks and I told her a bit about the work I was doing at CCS. I didn’t tell her I was undercover, but I did suggest that it was temporary to fill a specific need and I expected I’d be back in my own business soon.

“Maybe they’ll like you. You might be asked to stay.”

“I doubt that, Mom. These kinds of jobs don’t usually work that way.” I didn’t add that I wouldn’t go back to work for a corporation even if they did try to hire me. The taste of independence I’d had the past year plus made it hard for me to think about returning to a corporate grind. I’d tried that, thinking it was the road to security and wealth. Then the company I’d invested 15 years of my life in had tanked, thanks to unscrupulous management. Why would I do that all again? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over, expecting different results. I might starve, but I was happy.

“Everyone wanted to hire your father,” she continued. “He was a hard worker. Of course, it wasn’t always like that.” That was news to me. I’d only known a father who worked long hard hours every day of his life.

“What do you mean?”

“Well…” she lowered her voice and glanced around the room conspiratorially, “when we came to America, we were hippies. We never intended to work a day in our lives.”

“Mom! You’re kidding!”

“No, it’s true. You should know these things now that you’re grown up.” Grown up? I was 43. It seemed like I could have been told about this sometime in the past 20 years. “We got off the boat without even having a proper work visa. We were just tourists on a year-long trip to see the continent like American youths went to Europe. And just as the American teens set Amsterdam in their sites as the drug capitol of the world, we set our sights on San Francisco.”

“What happened?”

“We met a nice young couple, a little older than we were, who invited us to stay with them on a ranch in Montana. They worked us hard for little food and no money, but they told us that the hippie economy was about to collapse. The only ones who would survive were those who lived communally like we were and regained our native work ethic.”

“How did you manage to leave?”

“They took periodic trips to San Francisco to recruit new members of what they called their commune, even though they owned everything and only worked the kids they brought in. They made the mistake of assuming they were so far out in the wilderness that we wouldn’t try to leave on our own. But we did. We set all the animals free on the range and walked away the day they went to California. We walked 70 miles to the railroad and walked along it for two days until we came to a place where a freight train was stopped for cargo. We snuck on board and the next time it stopped, we were in Seattle.”

I’d never heard about this part of my parent’s life. I thought they came here straight from Sweden and went right to work. My mom was full of surprises.

“We couldn’t find a place to live,” Mom continued, “but your father found work on a fishing trawler. For the month it was at sea, I lived in the warehouse and picked up odd jobs doing cleaning and cooking. His first paycheck was enough for us to get a room in a boarding house and a permanent job offer. They weren’t so particular about checking visas back then.”

“You were illegal aliens?”

“You make it sound like we came from outer space,” she laughed. “We discovered the Swedish-American Center and a legal aide there went to work getting us proper papers and eventually citizenship. I went to college and got my education degree while your father continued to work the fishing trawlers and then the docks. And you came along. We couldn’t complain about that! The next year, Pastor Lundquist at the Swedish Lutheran Church asked me to start a kindergarten. Once we got it straight that there would be no religion taught in my school, I went to work.” I remembered that kindergarten in the basement of the Lutheran Church. I’d gone to it for three years with my mother as teacher.

“That’s an amazing story, Mom,” I said. I was to overwhelmed with the information to ask a coherent question.

“Well, it’s time you reconnected with your community, Dagget. Come with me to the Center this afternoon and meet people.”

“I kind of have an appointment this afternoon, Mom.” I’m not sure why I wasn’t ready to tell her about Andi. It was still too new for me to be sure of what I could say.

I’d really been alone now for over five years. I imagined my little black hole of an apartment wasn’t really conducive to having women over. It was a retreat. I’d had a few trysts over that time, but I’d avoided becoming romantically involved. They’d last a few weeks at most and we’d go our separate ways, the girls having never seen the way I live. If they had, I’m sure my time with them would have been even shorter. I wondered why I was suddenly so willing to let myself go with Andi.

“You need to get back to your roots,” my mother was saying.

“Mom, you always taught me to 100% American. You never wanted any of the kids in school to speak Swedish. You never took me to the SAC when I was growing up. Why should I now?”

“I mean your hair,” she smiled. “Your roots are showing. If you are going to color it, you need to keep it touched up.”

Damn. I couldn’t afford to go back to Sinclair every week. If this was going to be a problem, the dye-job would be short-lived.

“Although it wouldn’t hurt to visit your cousins in Sweden,” Mom continued. “Maybe you could take me so I can visit my sister. I miss the rest of the family.” She made it sound like she missed her sister, but the way her eyes were fixed on the fishing boats at the pier, I could tell it was Dad she was talking about.

I paid the check and our cab was waiting for us as promised. On the way to take Mom to the Swedish-American Center, she turned to me very seriously.

“You are getting old, Dag.”

“Gee, thanks Mom.”

“You get up in the morning and shower and shave so you can go to work. That’s what old men do. Young men come home from work, shower, and shave, so they can go to bed.”

“Mom!”

“Your father showered and shaved at night right up to the day he died.” There was a glistening in her eyes and I thought she was going to cry. I reached over and hugged her. I’d always thought Dad showered and shaved when he came home from work because he worked a dirty smelly job.

“I miss him, Dag. Sometimes I hear the clock strike six and I get up out of my chair to go great him at the door. I forget. Don’t wait too long, dear.” We were at the SAC and I asked the driver to wait while I escorted Mom to the door for her Sunday afternoon bingo game. I could smell cookies baking inside and my mouth watered, even though I’d just eaten. I kissed her head.

“I’ll see you next week, Mom,” I said.

I returned to the taxi and asked him to take me home. I’d told Andi I’d be there about three.

***