True Short Stories of Growing up in the Pacific Northwest

I grew up in Mountlake Terrace, Washington, a quiet town north of Seattle. Today it’s among the many suburbs of Seattle being revitalized with condominiums and multi-use properties. In the 1970’s it was a place of modest homes with green grassy lawns, towering pines, and cracked asphalt roads.  

Some of the suburbs’ small homes still exist, but not the one that sheltered our family. My 900 square foot childhood home on the cul-de-sac near the freeway, was demolished to make room for a commuter station. 

The Sound Transit Rail, built to alleviate the notorious Seattle area traffic, now stops in our old neighborhood.

Progress? Yes.

Sad? Maybe. But I must admit the commuter train serves thousands of people, and our little house simply provided for us.

And when I say provided, I mean it in the most basic of terms. We didn’t have much. We were a family of six living in a three-bedroom, one-bath home with the simplest of necessities. We had shelter. We had food. We had electricity - most of the time.

My three sisters and I each had one pair of shoes and were lucky if Wigwam had a sale on rubber flip flops in the summertime. It was a treat to receive a second pair of ‘shoes’ even if they were only 99c and usually broke before summer’s end. The summers of skipping through the woods behind our small dwelling and singing merrily any song that came to mind is a heartwarming memory. And when my flip flops broke, it didn’t stop me. I scampered through the woods barefoot, returning home with feet as black as the cracked asphalt in front of our house.

But it was the long, gloomy Fall-to-Springtime that perhaps shaped me the most. The Pacific Northwest is known for rain, and it was the gray-sky days looming habitually that created something in me I appreciate to this day. Tenacity.

You see, in our home, heat was a luxury. And though my dad stoked the central oil furnace, the warmth didn’t reach the edges of the house. And a tiny space heater could only warm the space in front of it, an area too small for four sisters to gather ‘round. So, much of the time, I was chilled. And maybe my spirit was chilled too. Looking out at the charcoal skies, the sharp wind shaking thin walls, and no cozy socks or fluffy blankets to be had; I conjured up plans. Plans to escape.

Not my life, but the dimness of my life.

Our toys were few, and usually had pieces missing, having been purchased from Goodwill. But we had a partially inflated red ball that could be used for a game of kickball. No pump for the ball; air pumps cost money. On cold, blustery days, I would plead with my sisters to play kickball in our cul-de-sac with the sunken ball. Running, it turned out, warmed me. If my sisters wouldn’t play, I’d petition the neighborhood kids. It did not matter to me if we didn’t have enough for an entire team, we could get it done with four people.

If I couldn’t get a team together, I’d try to persuade family and friends to play board games. Aggravation. Any card game. Checkers. ‘Please!’ I couldn’t stand not doing something, and the game would take my mind off the persistent dark skies and the cold that made me shudder. Sometimes, this worked. Sometimes, I was accused of cheating. Not so … I was simply a keen player. I was alive when we sat down to a game of Go Fish. And maybe my joy was a little over-the-top.

When no one would play with me, I conjured another distraction. Drawing in the margins. My father took the Seattle Post Intelligencer Newspaper. The games page featuring the ‘Spot the Differences’ puzzle and a Word Search kept me busy for a few minutes. But the most joy came from the blank portions of the newspaper. The margins. 

Blank paper was not something we kept in our home. It was an extravagance. I longed for clear, unused, plain white paper. To draw, to write and to doodle. Pencils were hard to come by, and if I did find one, I soon wore the tip down to nothing. No pencil sharpeners here, but a paring knife would do nicely until the pencil was so small, drawing with it became impossible. Pens were also scarce, but I would ‘borrow’ the pen my dad used for bill paying. If I put it back in its usual place, no one would be the wiser.

Pen in hand, and yesterday’s newspaper, I sprawled on the worn gold carpet of our living room floor and drew. Intricate flowers. Ladies in the latest fashions. And cats, lots of cats. I would draw dogs with hats and button-eyed teddy bears. I’d add tall pines near schools of fish swimming up the edge of the newspaper. I tried my hand at lettering, which I later learned was also called calligraphy. And let’s not forget the rhyming ditties with musical notes placed near them. Making up silly songs about my family, our cat, and anything that drew a smile was a favorite pastime. Sometimes, the songs made my mom laugh, an added bonus.

And lying on my stomach, elbows propped, images parading through my mind, I’d forget the cold. The gray. The ebbing of liveliness to bleakness. 

Indeed, it was the bleakness I’d been trying to avoid all along.

And so what if I didn’t want to wallow in dreariness? My nine-year-old self had no idea what I was doing. But my spirit did. I was living.

Today, when I write or draw or even make a list, there are times I stop and whisper a ‘thank you’ for the blank paper. I have pens and pencils in most any color available to me. And a pencil sharpener. Luxuries. And the fact I can type a message or a story on a computer? Extravagant!

Looking back, the drawing and writing in the margins was more than just a creative endeavor. It was a way to cope. With the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. There was no one to blame. My parents did the best they could with their resources. My sisters weren’t much for games and perhaps found other ways to distract themselves. 

But for me, the long winters were a challenge. And until I could run through the woods on a warm summer day, I needed something. And it turned out, drawing in the margins was the very thing I could do. 

My tenacity remains to this day. If you’re visiting for any length of time, I will ask you to play a game. I listen to all kinds of music and sing along, sometimes while wearing flip flops. And if I make up a few words to a song, that’s even better.

And when I see an old newspaper, I think fondly of the days I drew in the margins. For distraction. For warmth. For life. 

by Beth Williams

Every summer, my parents collected us four girls onto the bench seats of our latest used car, and we made the trek from Seattle to Spokane, Washington, to visit my grandmother. Upon arrival, Bernice Apitz, descended the steps in her homemade dress and apron, welcoming us ‘kiddies’ with warm hugs; a faint scent of molasses cookies trailing behind her. 

Bernice like ‘furnace’ not the other way. The last name, Apitz, that’s ‘A’ through ‘Z’ with a ‘pit’ in the middle - she was full of helpful tips when it came to her name. Though to us, she was simply grandma. 

Grandma lived among the ponderosa pine on Ruby Road in a pale pink and white house with a red chicken barn out back. Though, by the time yours truly entered the barnyard, the chickens had already flown the coop. 

The four of us would traipse through the dried grass and thorny scrub of our grandma’s backyard to the weather faded chicken barn. We entered the abandoned structure looking for treasure; perhaps an old baby buggy or a discarded doll; only to find bits of straw, old washboards and metal buckets of little interest. 

Of more interest was the wringer washing machine in the basement of grandma’s home. With crooked fingers, she showed us how to feed the clothes between the rotating rollers to remove excess water after each wash and rinse; warning us not to get our fingers too close to the spinners that would cause injury. I wondered if that was what had happened to her fingers.

The wrung laundry glided neatly into a basket we carried out back for the drying stage. We would shake and grandma would clip, holding extra clothespins in her mouth while she worked. I remember the fresh scent of sheets dried outside. Today’s sprays proclaiming to be ‘linen scented’ never quite get it right.

Spokane can be hot in the summertime, but grandma had a solution for that. Between the house and her detached garage was the covered outdoor space she called the breezeway. When afternoons grew warm, we gathered aluminum lawn chairs and sat in the breezeway, escaping the heat. Cool lemonade flowed while we chatted about the weather and ‘to dos.’ 

Nothing about the ‘to dos’ was complicated. They were simply connected to the needful. Who would pick the green beans for supper? Someone needed to peel potatoes. And evidence of dark clouds, even a drop of rain, meant a few of us would make a quick dash to the clothesline. 

With enough hands to go around, the plan unfolded effortlessly. Then, in the evenings, when chores were finished, the dishes neatly stacked in varnished cupboards, we did the truly fun stuff.

Summertime in the Pacific Northwest means it’s light until nearly 9:00 pm. What was one to do with all that daylight and the day’s chores complete?

In grandma’s house, it meant game time. My four-foot-something grandmother with her wavy white hairdo set against summer tanned skin loved games! Her clear blue eyes danced when she shuffled the cards. My grandfather had fallen in love with those eyes. And maybe with her gumption too.

We played Aggravation on my grandfather’s handmade pine game board. He passed in 1968 and I’m not sure I appreciated his handcrafted board as a young child. I was more into getting all my marbles home and winning the game! Upon revelation a few of the old boards still existed, I sighed inwardly, knowing no one would part with this piece of family nostalgia. 

We played all kinds of card games. Go Fish, Old Maid, Pinochle. My father wasn’t much for games, but some nights he would play the tunes of a bygone era on grandpa’s old harmonica.

Those were the best nights. Turkey in the Straw drifting in the background while we laughed and teased and learned the best strategies. 

Grandma taught us several games, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten many of them. But one I’ve never forgotten; Yahtzee. It may be because it’s a game of chance, with just a wee bit of strategy. It may be because it involves addition, which keeps my simple math skills honed. It may be because it was the last game I remember playing with her.

The game is ancient and believed to have originated thousands of years ago. On your turn, you get three rolls of the dice with the cup. The score sheet lists how to score and gain extra points. I go for sixes whenever possible, and straights, and of course - Yahtzee! All five dice being of one suit. When the jiggle of the dice in the cup begins, my heart leaps just a little. Scorepad ready. This is going to be my night!

We played each summer. Sometimes with sisters. Sometimes with cousins. Always with grandma. Her competitiveness feeding mine that still exists today.

One summer, my sisters and I noticed grandma taking more than three rolls during her turn. We called her on it. No cheating! She simply laughed saying we were teasing her, and we just didn’t want her to win. It didn’t take many games that summer to see she wasn’t taking extra turns on purpose. She was not cheating. She was losing count.

Another thing we noticed was her writing on the score sheet. It was wiry. Not like the neat penmanship we were used to seeing. 

Following that summer vacation, we received reports of grandma losing things. Her car keys she always hung on the hook just inside the door, her purse. Then there were the words. She was missing them more often now. What had she meant to say? She started confusing the days of the week. Her lifelong friends noticed the changes and offered to drive her to church, concerned she would get lost, or miss a stop sign along the way.

When the time of day became confusing for grandma, my father and his siblings made the difficult choice to move her from the old chicken farm to a duplex in town where she would be near to my aunt and uncle.

Her dementia progressed. She couldn’t remember; had she eaten or not? And who were those real people coming out of the TV into her living room? 

The next step was a memory care facility, where I visited her for the last time. She believed she was a little girl of seven on her Illinois farm, and she linked her elbow with my father’s, clumsily skipping down the hallway as if it were a garden pathway. Chanting, “Sonny! Sonny!” 

Alzheimer’s, the slow whisper of death, steals the fragments that make up a life piece by piece for those hearing the whispers. For my grandmother, it started with forgetting the number of rolls she’d taken in a game. 

For me, watching her season of dementia, the whispers came like the breeze in the breezeway; harkening back to what life was like before the pieces slipped away. Remembering summertime with grandma - filled with clotheslines and picking beans and daylit evenings of rolling dice. 

Her legacy is simple: Do the needful. Sit in the breeze. Challenge each other. 

Enjoy your life.

And remember, summertime.

by Beth Williams

For me, the 1970’s was a decade of change. A season filled with expressions of peace in the face of unrest. A mixture of rock ‘n roll and disco music; and a time to wonder what in my world was happening.

Following our parents’ divorce, my sisters and I lived with our mother. The visitation with our father was sporadic. He had no clue how to wrangle four teenaged girls.

Most people would describe our mother as kind, with a servant attitude. Humble, and not in the least bit vain. And it was her lack of vanity that caused me angst.

I’m not saying vanity is a huge plus, but going too far the other way can be problematic. Especially when it comes to clothes. I don’t want to see a stranger wearing pants so low I can see their underwear. Or worse yet, a plumber’s crack. Cover that stuff up. Please.

Seventies fashion brought bell bottoms, waffle stompers and floral headbands adorning long hair. We were casual. We were cool. Though our mother was not ‘cool’ in my view, she was casual. Sweatshirts with just a small stain. Canvas shoes with rubber peeling off the soles. Torn pockets on tee shirts, the threads dangling for all to see. Embarrassing.

A pair of jeans with a broken zipper didn’t faze her. She had a solution! A large safety pin. Oh yes … she simply pinned them closed.

“Mom, there’s a safety pin on your jeans.”

“Yes, I know. The zipper broke.”

“But – mom. You can’t wear jeans with a broken zipper.”

I remember her response some fifty years later. “No one will notice.” Her smile demure. She’d simply pinned her jeans and gone on with her day.

“I noticed.” My mortified reply.

“You’re too worried about what people think.”

And my thirteen-year-old self, thinking: Hell yes.

But she didn’t care. She was living her life, be-bopping to the beat of Tony Orlando and Dawn’s ‘Knock Three Times’ pouring from the kitchen radio. Singing while she cleared the dish drainer, I watched her moves hoping the pin might snap. Not to hurt her, but to demonstrate the error of her ways.

It stayed put. Darn.

And so it was, our mother’s choice of dress and my embarrassment cohabitated in our small home.

Then there was the outfit. The purple and red striped shirt with orange pants. The pants, a polyester knit with a seam down the front. The outfit was bright, unmatching – and in my mind, had to go. There was no way I would be seen with her wearing that. 

I was cunning about it. I waited until she was out of the house and grabbed one of our paper grocery bags. Slipping to her room, I located the offending striped top and orange pants – and deposited them into the bag, quickly. Then rolling the top of the bag, tightly closed, I slid out the front door, hoping my sisters wouldn’t notice. 

Tossing it into our metal trash can and replacing the lid as silently as I could; I felt a sense of what? Guilt? Maybe. But I reminded myself, I’d done the world a favor. 

The funny thing is, I don’t recall my mother ever looking for the clothes. If she did ask about them, I wasn’t around to hear it.

***

Years later, I told my younger sister Deb about my transgression. She thought it was hilarious. Both of us had our own children by then and neither of us could fathom our kids doing such a thing. Of course, I believed we dressed with decorum. Our clothes matched. 

It wasn’t long after revealing my secret, we decided to enjoy a day in the snow at the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. Bundled up, we gathered sleds and rented snowshoes and poles for cross-country skiing. While my husband took the kids sledding; my mother, her friend, my sister and I hiked a snowy trail through the pines.

We took a flat path, away from the squeals of sledding children. Tree branches laden with heavy snow, drooped humbly on either side of us. The trail was wide, the snow was deep, and we were thankful for our snowshoes and poles.  With winter whiteness surrounding us completely, and no one else on the footpath, it was quiet. Peaceful. Soft. My mother and her friend hiked ahead of us. Her bright red coat and purple hat in contrast to our serene surroundings.

And then my sister said it.

“You have to tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

“About the outfit. The one you threw away.”

“C’mon. That was twenty years ago. She probably doesn’t even remember it.”

We glided a few more steps on the frozen path.   

“I’m going to tell her you have something to share.”

And just like that, my sister took off, up the trail to join our mother and her friend. Traitor.

Apparently, I would be revealing my thirteen-year-old self’s sin on the snow-covered trail. 

True confessions.

Resolved that there was no place to hide on this wintry trek, I joined the others.

“Go ahead.” My sister coaxed me. A twinkle in her eye, her smile barely contained.

“Ok. Mom. Remember-when-we-were-kids-and-you-had-the-purple-and-red-striped-shirt-and-orange-pants-that-didn’t-match?” I said in one swoop, then took a breath.

“I remember that outfit, it was so fun!” Her face brightened.

Fun for you maybe.

I continued. “Well, it didn’t match. And it was embarrassing and, I umm, put it in a grocery bag and threw it away.”

She simply started laughing. Our mother. “I always wondered what happened to those clothes!” She was merry. Not hurt. Not angry. And we laughed. All of us. My sister gave me a thumbs up with her mittened hand while our giggles echoed against majestic pines.

***

Many years have passed since my confession on the slopes. Our mother is almost ninety. She still loves bright colors and large floral prints. She no longer pins her jeans, but I noticed a few safety pins in her catchall she keeps ‘for emergencies.’

Mom needed some new eyeglasses recently and I took her shopping for them. I noticed her last pair seemed a bit neutral for her.

“Mom. Why don’t you pick out something jazzy?”

“Jazzy?”

“Yes. You’ve always liked bright colors. Why not choose something colorful?”

Her look was a bit confused. Her mind is fine, but her hearing is waning. So, I showed her. I pulled red and blue and purple frames from the displays. 

“Something along these lines.”

“Are you sure they aren’t too bold?”

“For some, maybe. For you, never!”

She tried them on, settling on a colorful blue and purple pair that would work nicely with her wardrobe. 

Our mother doesn’t look her age. She still sings along to the radio, wearing all the colors of the rainbow. Her kindness and humility remain intact. And I’ve let go of my angst. She is herself. I am me. 

Today, I don’t care much about what people think. And another true confession, though I’m a neutral gal – occasionally – I throw caution to the wind and add a colorful scarf to my navy-blue ensemble. Progress.

But still. I have no desire to see your underwear. Please. 

by Beth Williams