REFRAMING A CITY

A long-distance relationship has its obvious drawbacks. Seeing one another requires a constant review of logistics. Early on, my ex proudly announced some sort of monthly calendar rotation regarding how we’d spend our weekends: one his place, one my place, one “wild card,” one off. Or something like that. He’s a planner and the plan made him happy. Settled even. I’m definitely not a planner, but I’ll never knock anyone’s efforts to set things in stone, even if it turns out the stones roll. 

 

Despite my customary resistance, I too had to allow for some degree of planning in the relationship. A spontaneous text—“Wanna come over?”—doesn’t work when it includes crossing an international border and takes about three hours (for him) or five (for me—extra stops along the way, naturally). 

 

There is an upside in any breakup…once the cycle of humiliation, sorrow and WTF wanes. Okay, even during that cycle. That upside is more obvious when the relationship was long-distance. I have roamed Vancouver freely without any concern I’d run into him on the sidewalk, in a store or even online while scrolling people near me on Grindr. 

 

Out of sight. Out of mind? Someday.

 

Last time I fell in love, it was also a long-distance scenario. A guy in Portland. When “we” ended, I knew I couldn’t quit the place. I still loved the city. I’d risk a chance encounter. I’m not anxious about the possibility anymore because we worked our way back to friends and, besides, he moved to Iowa. (Why?!) 

 

I’m not willing to give up Seattle either. I’d visited many times before my two years of love. I’d built up a song’s worth of my favorite things, nothing involving bright copper kettles or whiskers on kittens. Three months after he dumped me, I returned for a couple of days. As a first time back, it was easier knowing I wouldn’t run into him. He’d moved to Denver which, if I harshly rewrite our personal history, I’ll say he did for the primary purpose of making me fly there to be immediately dumped. What an ending!

 

He can have Denver. He can do whatever it is he does there without any worry I’ll happen to be jogging past him. Technically, I’ve been back there, but it was only an airport layover en route to Philadelphia. It’s hard to imagine it’ll ever be a destination again. I’ve already turned down a family reunion there in July. (A prior commitment in California comes close enough to being a conflict.)

 

I’m regularly hit with memories of him as I go about life in Vancouver. Sometimes I shrug; often, I swear in my head. It’s my substitute for that old lady routine of grabbing a broom and telling a cat, a warren of dust bunnies or a DoorDash dude waiting for a tip to “Shoo!” Sorry, but sometimes “Shit!” feels so much better. Any transition from the stages of loss to nostalgia remains somewhere in the future. 

 

I knew the first time back in Seattle would be something I’d just have to get through. The Vancouver reminders are well into the repeat cycle now, but Seattle presented my first glimpse of the relationship highlight reel, Emerald City edition. 

 

For the most part, I played things strategically. My first evening, I ran to and around Green Lake, a place I could never convince him to join me for a walk. Green Lake has always been mine, all mine. He wasn’t a fan of ice cream, so I enjoyed a scoop of “rhubarb upside down cake” (yes, I’m still talking ice cream) at Molly Moon’s and a scoop of vegan “salty caramel ash” (a flavor, too) at Frankie & Jo’s. Zero memories triggered. 

 

But, slowly, carefully, I went to places clearly associated with him. I returned to his neighborhood and used my soon-to-expire parking pass to park on his street so I could write at Eastlake Coffee where I’d written so many times before. I was always comfortable there; the sessions were always productive. If he still lived down the block, I would not have gone back—ever. Too stalker-ish. 

 

I passed all sorts of bars and restaurants we went to. Didn’t go in. Didn’t need to. As I’m still going through a rough patch with my eating disorder, a scoop of ice cream served as an entire day’s intake. He was all about tacos and margaritas. Haven’t had either since. Passing up Mexican restaurants was helpful-ish, but I couldn’t pretend the spots had vanished. Even if I never go into any of them again, they will be tombstones marking a dead relationship. 

 

Adios! Hasta la vista (Terminator-style)! No burrrrrito for me. (I can’t roll my Rs so I always overemphasized it to make my ex laugh. I do miss hearing such joy and seeing it in his smile and his eyes. Gone. Take me down, Ah-nold.)

 

My wanderings became a mix. New things. Me things. We things. Meeting a friend near Pioneer Square, I got turned around coming up from the light rail station—that always happens when I emerge from underground. I auto-saved the experience as an anecdote to share with him later in the day. It was a harsh slap across the face when it dawned on me there was no later period for us. Our nightly shares and Seattle meetups were history. Twenty minutes below street level made me lose all bearings, far beyond just my sense of direction. 

 

Single again, you fool. How the hell did that slip your mind?

 

I suppose the whole breakup episode is still a mindfuck. I don’t understand. I just have to accept. 

 

While walking downtown, there was so much architecture I wanted to hear him explain to me. Such an expert! It was sexy listening to him talk cornices, railings, gates and lighting. Without him, I regressed to a word bank of pretty, detailed, and tiles. Sigh. Sometimes it’s like we never were. 

 

Would that have been better? 

 

I went to an Alexander Calder exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum and, knowing there was a Jacob Lawrence exhibit coming later in the summer, I bought an annual membership. It was a good sign. Arts supporter. Breakup survivor. I would not shy away from the city. I’d deal with the memories. I would continue to be blindsided by out-of-the-blue recollections, but maybe I would stop trying so desperately to bat them away, to not cry in public. 

 

I'll always have the troll.
Some consolation...

Maybe I’d become resigned to such moments. You again. Only not him, of course. A ghost of him. Not scary. I don’t have that association with spectral images. Not a ghoul but perhaps never a friendly incarnation either, à la Casper. Just a presence, his aura a part of me for the short-term. Just like his actual being in life as it turned out.

 

The second visit is now a month away. Less frequent than what used to be calendared. Nonetheless, I’m glad Seattle is still on my radar.

 

  

OUR TOWN

There’s a song from the early ’80s by J.D. Souther and James Taylor called “Her Town Too.[1]” It’s a sad, post-breakup ballad, looking at the mess that comes in the aftermath. The two people go on, of course, but it’s awkward when both continue living in that same town, seeing the same people who knew them as a couple. 

 

Well, people got used to seeing them both together

But now he’s gone and life goes on

Nothing lasts forever, oh no

She gets the house and the garden

He gets the boys in the band…

 

It used to be your town

It used to be my town, too.

 

As a teen, listening to the song was brutal. I ached for James Taylor who has always struck me as a gentle, introverted, conflicted soul. (What I was and am…although I managed to avoid the drug problem.) He’d looked so handsome on the 1977 “JT” album cover and had sounded so content singing “Your Smiling Face,” a song that sounds like pure sunshine…if its rays had a vocal. Carly and James were one of the first celebrity couples I was aware of and, being a pop music fan(atic), I felt joy listening to them duet on “Mockingbird” and “Devoted to You,” thinking they represented the modern fairy tale. Carly came off as a happy free spirit whom I’d decided was a perfect companion for James whom I’d heard experienced depression and had an extended psychiatric admission when he was younger. (Yes, this is the kind of thinking I had as a kid, hoping for happiness for people I felt needed it most. Isn’t it interesting how much we identify with kindred spirits even before we have the labels that confirm how alike we may be?) 

 

“Her Town Too” was released around the time James and Carly separated. They would divorce two years later. James has said the song is about another couple that went through divorce, but I can’t help but think there was a little music therapy in it for him too. Maybe shock therapy, the harsh reality that follows.

 

I’ve never had a relationship with someone with whom I had to share a town after the love flamed out. When I dated guys in L.A., getting from one neighborhood to another might take an hour in traffic so, if we split up, that basically meant I’d never see him again…and I’d save a helluva lot on gas. (Was that any kind of silver lining?) Earlier this year, I wrote about my Vancouver ex. The city’s big enough for us to exist separately, but I didn’t want to risk running into him for safety and sanity reasons so I blinked and moved to a rural community with some water and a ferry between us to make the distance seem greater.

 

You would think that the easiest post-breakup adjustment would be with the guy who lived in Portland, Oregon while I was in Vancouver. It was not a “His Town Too” situation. It wasn’t even a case of “His Country Too.” And yet in some ways it’s been the trickiest relationship from which to re-cast the settings after the fact because it stands up as the most important.

 

I’d spent so much time in both Seattle and Portland as a solo traveler, checking out neighborhoods, local coffee spots, public art and parks. These cities are among my happy places. Beginning in late 2016, my time in these cities became shared experiences when a friendship with a guy from Portland became more. 

 

The change was a risk. We had something special as friends. There was a profound sense of understanding and connection. Both of us needed a friend. And both of us had a track record of romantic relationships that didn’t pan out. We’d invested a year and a half building this friendship, mostly through online messages but deepened by some in-person visits that were remarkably comfortable while also leaving me with a strong sense of wow. A disastrous stint at dating could destroy everything, all ties lost. Over a breakfast in Seattle, I stumbled and bumbled to get the words out, proposing we move beyond friendship. To my great relief, he wanted the same thing.

 

Bear & I became fast friends
as I waited for another
departure from YVR airport.

For about a year, our risk paid off. Via planes, trains and automobiles, we met regularly in Portland, Vancouver and often halfway, in Seattle. We made the long-distance relationship (mostly) work. I can’t delete that parenthetical. I still get stuck on feeling I failed. I was too emotional, too defective…just too. I still feel the pain from conflicts that arose. It hurts knowing I couldn’t—we couldn’t—figure out a better way to navigate those times.

 

It’s that pain that left me wondering after the relationship’s demise if I’d lost not just him but the cities we shared. I thought they might be forever tainted—a forfeiture after Game Over. Portland, where he lived, seemed to logically revert to him. Seattle? We could share custody, but would it ever be one of my happy places again?   

 

Six months after our breakup, I blogged about a return visit to Portland and the Oregon Coast. His town, his state, but I didn’t want them to relinquish them. Ideally, I wanted to still see him whenever I was in town. I wanted my friend back. We weren’t at that point and I couldn’t count on us ever getting there. For other reasons, I was emotionally vulnerable and I told myself I needed the comfort of familiar escapes from my crumbling life in Vancouver. I’d had Portland memories before the relationship and I was determined to have new memories thereafter, ones that wouldn’t be forever clouded by feelings of failure and thoughts of him. 

 

My ex knew about my blog and had always been complimentary and supportive of my writing. I figured he’d stopped checking it out after things fell apart, but he’d read the post and assured me—Bitterly? Sarcastically? Generously?—I could have the city back without him being in the way. 

 

I got them back. Portland; Seattle as well. His towns. But my towns, too. I came to love these places again, without the man I’d loved. We did meet occasionally when I was back in Portland, times that I still valued although there was a guardedness present and, for me, lingering guilt and emotional confusion. We were friendly but were we friends? It was a work in progress.

 

Then came COVID. 

 

Dragon lurking deep in a local forest

No travel, no escapes. For a while, I did a masterful job in deceiving myself. I played tourist in my town. That worked for a year. I’d cycled every bike route in Vancouver and all the suburbs and I’d walked and jogged every block within a long-armed radius from my home. I’d day-hiked every trail in the region. I’d Googled every local “secret,” to track down alley murals, twig-crafted forest creatures and boulders with poems inscribed on them. I even rushed to visit a (deserted) rooftop dog park despite not having a dog. Yes, I’d literally reached the dog days of the pandemic. 

 

When the U.S. border finally reopened for Canadians to drive across last month, I rushed to pack, book hotels and get away. There were still hurdles and limits so short road trips were the only option I could manage. Hello again, Seattle! And then, hey there, Portland!  

 

My old haunts were fully mine again. My ex had moved two thousand miles away. Iowa. (Really?)

 

And yet there were so many moments when he was with me, in my mind at least. I didn’t try to push him away; rather, I welcomed him and every small reminder of us.

 

I wish I could more vividly remember our conversations and our experiences. Someone might diss me, say I’m not romantic. That seems patently unfair. As a long-time educator, I know we learn and process differently. Details don’t stick with me. I’m not panicked about early-onset Alzheimer’s, even if I frequently wonder why I got off the sofa to walk into the bathroom. You’d think the setting would make things clear but no. Did I need to pee? Was it a dental floss emergency? Is there a hangnail I need to deal with? Too often, I find myself shrugging and washing my hands because, well, haven’t we all amassed two lifetimes’ worth of soap and sanitizer? 

 

I’ve stopped seeing fogginess as a fault.

 

In Portland and Seattle, what remains strong are the feelings and that sense of connection. They are what mattered. They are what still matter. My drive to Portland took nine hours instead of five due to a long border wait and two doses of rush hour traffic, first in Seattle, then in Tacoma. It allowed enough time to recall one particularly awful drive from Vancouver to Portland, traffic bottlenecked for a seventy-mile stretch from north of Seattle to Olympia. I’d had to pull off at an exit, frazzled, hands shaking, fighting back tears. I can’t make it. I refueled on caffeine, did a walking tour of nearby parking lots (sorry, no photos) and got back into the highway queue. When I arrived at his place, none to the traffic snarl mattered. I was like a puppy as he opened the door. “You! Yes, you.” I can allow this recollection; I can savor it. 

 

I know how nostalgia tends to let the rosiest moments stay in bloom, but I I still have perspective. I’m not warp our relationship into something mythical. I remember darker times, but I have enough distance now to wholly cherish the good times as well.

 

And there were many. 

 

Places that weren’t even filed in my memory come back when I pass them: a pizza place we ate at where the crust was charcoal black, weirdly just the way I like it (much to my mother’s annoyance, burnt toast was my childhood specialty); the area we walked off the main strip to photograph tucked away street murals; the street—or is it just a ramp—that I’d drive to go from downtown back to his place, always worried, always bracing for the possibility I’d get stuck in the wrong lane and miss it. (The worry was warranted. I regularly missed it, my directional challenges always amped up in Portland. Getting lost is embedded in my route from any A to any B in the city. Oh, yeah! This is familiar. I’ve been lost here before.)

 

There are other spots that enter my mind even though I don’t pass them: a craft brewery where I had the best berry cider ever and have tried to find something close to it ever since, a beloved Mexican restaurant, a comfy neighborhood bookstore, a bakery whose popularity perplexed me, a pool where’d I’d swim laps. I don’t pass them because they’re part of my ex’s neighborhood. I don’t have any reason to go there now that he’s gone. 

 

With time, I realize how much I needed my time with him, even if it didn’t last. He helped me see the good in a man again. Yes, he was good. Sometimes we were good, too. Many times.

 

I see these places as not only my towns, but his towns. I embrace them as our towns, too.

 

I was here. We were here.

 

I am grateful.

---

[1] The two share writing credits for the song along with Waddy Wachtel.