Belltown Messenger - Documenting Downtown Seattle

city girl

MARY LOU SANELLI confronts the house snobs
An Ant in a Hive

A Sunday afternoon In Sunset Hill.

A quiet neighborhood. The house I'm visiting is one road back from the sea.

Inside, seven of us gather: One couple is from Queen Anne. One woman is from Burien. Or Old Burien. I didn't know how significant that distinction was until I went there. One of us lives on "The Eastside," meaning Bellevue or Redmond or... where? Why doesn't he just say? I live in Belltown.

We are the open joy of those who clearly cherish the occasion we've come to celebrate: The host and host's anniversary, twenty-five years. Despite the quagmire the legality their union is, these guys have more of a marriage than any couple I know. It's easy to feel their devotion.

"We bought this house nineteen years ago," one of them says, "before this city went crazy."

I cringe. Comparatively, I'm new to Seattle. Still touchy about being part of the "crazy" he's referring to.

The wine is poured. And because some of us are East Coast Italians and the others are men who want to be, we're all very animated now, very dancy in the limbs.

I look out the west window and the view of sea is so vast and beautiful it takes me by surprise. Such sweeping views always feel like luxury to me and I say so aloud to the host.

"That's because you live cooped up in a cage downtown." He means my condo.

Well, yes, I thought. And no.

Yes, because my "cage" is not perched over the sound with a bird's eye view of container ships.

No, in that I don't long for more space in which to live in. Or a view for which to pay for.

I mull on whether to say this, not entirely willing to mistake my friend's good wine for good manners. I hold my tongue. Still, just like that, our conversation shifts to, oh no!, Greg Nickels and his penchant for urban density.

Apparently no one here can say the word "condo" without smirking. Except the realtor who sells them, lots of them. "Then I'm soooo glad to get back to my plot of paradise," he says. "I need space around me."

There's that word again: space. I remember hearing it a lot when I first moved here. I suppose to someone like moi, someone used to the crush of people in New York, Seattle still has plenty of it. That only a ten minute walk away, on Queen Anne and Capitol Hill, there is a bounty of trees and gardens is part of its charm.

"Oh I don't even go downtown any more," his wife says. "They've ruined it." Who they? Ruined? Why ruined? I've been dreading this conversation, both the conversation and writing about it.

Oh Jesus. Now everyone is digging deep into their internal storage of "old" downtown. Like going to Mama's Kitchen with the munchies. I don't say what I'm thinking: That selling a slew of condos is likely why the realtor can afford to live on Queen Anne. And I don't tell his wife that downtown isn't ruined, it's getting better.

My fear is that an ungenerous message will come through, despite my efforts to quell it: that there's something dormant about people who refuse to see the future through a modern prism; therefore, there is something wrong with them. So nothing. Instead, I percolate. My thoughts are like cats rubbing against my legs. One of them wants to claw back into this conversation. Because, hello, I'm the only one here who actually lives in a condo downtown.

"This city used to be so great. Now it's condo, condo, condo," the gal from Burien says.

My response pops free and it's pointed. Laced with pride. Not a good combo. "It's either more condos or more suburbs! Most people can't afford a house in this city! And, hey, we condo-ites use less resources. We share our walls. And I walk everywhere. Or take the bus. When was the last time you took the bus?" Ut oh.

"Why would I want to live like an ant in a hive?" my host says. He means a bee. Or anthill. But no way I'll say so. Confrontation smudges our happy mood.

Why is it, I often wonder, that so many in this city, those who are tolerant of differing beliefs on everything from sexual preference to European vs. domestic wines, dispense with sensitivity when confronted with the reality of Seattle becoming more than their hometown? Is it old-hippy-elitism or just run-of-the-mill middle-age fear of a world forging ahead as we begin to fade away? I feel the ravine between our pasts, and our expectations for Seattle, widen when I'm confronted with this question.

Perhaps once you get so used to living somewhere, you cease to see its possibilities. You get distracted by other things, day-to-day things that have you with your head down. No one can hold on to the past. It's a want that is a prideful insularity of its own. And it can become it's own depression. We have to accept our friends and family as they grow, change, hurt our feelings, or make us afraid. Same with a city.

This is all such hard stuff. And, really, the answers will crowd together at an internal level for years before anyone agrees on anything. It's the human condition.

Lucky me. Next door, a lawn guy fires up his blower and my host races out to the deck to remind him it's Sunday, and to "use a rake for Christsake!" How relieved I am that he has someone to yell at other than me: The condo-dweller with too many opinions.

"Stop!" I yell. "Forget about city politics (if only we could)!" I raise my glass. "Salute!"

"Salute!" everyone yells back, nodding.

You might ask why I wrote this, why I took notes on my friends. Easy. They're the best story I've got.

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This essay was originally published in Seattle Metropolitan Magazine. Sanelli's latest book is Falling Awake: An American Woman Gets a Grip on the Whole Changing World One Essay at a Time.