Amelia's birthday wish was to go away with just her parents and no sisters. While we only had one night two weeks late because of the prison-house of activities at which I always marvel and despair, it was happily anticipated. Stephanie rented a room in Coupeville, the town on Whidbey Island we lived in the very romantic year before we were married.
The town itself is the second oldest in the state and lovingly zoned, a couple of times standing in for Martha's Vineyard or thereabouts in movies like War of the Roses and Practical Magic.
But as a getaway for Amelia's birthday, it was also close and featured one of our favorite walks in the state.
In the end, Stephanie and I were able to revisit a place vividly and affectionately remembered from our days of courting -- places we walked, air we tasted, the quaint and quiet and slowness that had room just for us. And by the end, we cherished the beauty of the place, and remembered, too, why when surrounded with such natural and historical treasures we rented a movie almost every night.
One of the very fun things about our visit was that we were only three store fronts away from the house we'd occupied, a beautiful craftsman celebrating its hundred year anniversary next year (sharing the date with our house in Seattle). The house is now a store-front called Lavender Wind, and its opening made the kind of local news I'm happy now to see.
We talked with the owners inside, and they told us of many others who'd stopped through to tell of their years in the house. They promised to make a Facebook page where we could share our story, and they did it right away. The page includes a video of their remodel that will be of much more interest to Stephanie and me than anyone reading here -- but the video does include images of the house the way we remember it.
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| Hey! This was the entrance to a coffee shop where I'd grade papers! |
Amelia celebrated with us and seemed almost as interested as we.
I'm sure not everything was interesting, such as comments like, "Hey, that used to be a coffee shop where I'd grade papers!" But Amelia is always game, always curious, and always a gratifying traveling companion.
We could not have predicted, though, when we drove to Ebey's Landing, one of Stephanie's favorite walks in the state, that the January afternoon would surpass so many of our past walks in light and warmth. Amelia experienced Crockett's meadows in painterly otherworldliness; after we hiked past beet fields and ascended the yellow cliffs along the meandering lines of the water, we returned along the beach as the sun softly began to set, turning the grasses a full gold; and by the time we neared the beginning again, Mt. Rainier reflected the pastels of the sky and its bready red hunks of cloud.
Happy thirteenth, Amelia!
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