It is late afternoon on a Saturday in late September, early fall, and it all could be normal again if it weren’t for the masks and jugs of sanitizer in the entryway of the cat cafe here in Wallingford. The cat cafe, a place offering the comfort and calm of being with 20 homeless cats for an hour just to pet or play with them, and a nice spot for a gang of 14-year-olds to celebrate Charlotte’s birthday. And it all could be normal again driving down the main drag of Wallingford headed home, this neighborhood in north Seattle, the temporary wooden structures with bistro lights where diners eat al fresco, the views of the Space Needle I point out to the kids in the back seat who look up from their phones, the sound of the tunnel off the freeway with the sun roof open, the fact Charlotte has just turned 14 and can sit around the dining room table with her friends laughing, eating pizza on paper plates. And Dawn and I can hold hands while they watch a movie in the garage and sip our non-alcoholic beers and share the load in the kitchen cleaning up. And wake to a cool cloudy walk to the lake, the stillness of no one around, a touch of pink on the morning sky and the same from these roses outside my window, unfazed by anything that could stop their bloom.

Categories: prose, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction, pacific northwest, parenting