Like Spawning Salmon, We return

 

Like spawning salmon, we return...

At the entrance to Ivar's Salmon House, Seattle
March 28, 1986 - June 18, 2025

Ah, I remember it well...

Well... maybe I sorta remember some things from 39 years ago. 

I definitely remember feeling rather giddy and comfortably wonderful about my wedding scheduled for tomorrow. The rehearsal had gone well, my best men, Paul Gold and Chalmer McClure had goofed around, we posed for a few eccentric photos wedged into the formal rehearsal space at University Presbyterian Church in The U-District in Seattle.

With places, timing and roles all discussed, practiced and memorized, it was time for everyone in the wedding party to join us at Ivar's Salmon House for the pre-nuptial dinner on the shores of Lake Union, under the shadow of the towering I-5 Ship Channel Bridge. The food was good, the company was great, as I remember it.

It is an interesting exercise to skip through all the twists and turns that our life has shared in the years since we first dined at Ivar's; I find myself having built a new, whimsical house on the 50 acres on which my bride was raised. As fate would have it, I am mostly living in our Washington house, while my bride is living at our house in Texas where we raised our kids and spend the majority of our lives the past 35 years.

It is exciting that for a few weeks this summer of 2025, we will be reunited under the roof of our House on the Pilchuck. And in a few days, we will begin to welcome family to our house as well. Just as it had always been planned and as it should be.

Susan, my bride flew into Seattle from Dallas on June 18, landing early evening. She lands, but her cell phone (these miraculous thing had not been invented when we arrange to get married back in 1986) was not responding or dialing out. Something to do with the settings or maybe battery life. Oh, the frustrations of relying on miraculous devices.

I parked at the airport, studied the digital board of flight arrivals and noted that her flight had landed. Hoping she made her flight, I had to assume she would be somewhere inside the Seattle airport. I hung out at the baggage claim carousel paired with her flight - no bride in sight. I wandered among the madding crowds for about a half hour and found my lost (or runaway) bride shuffling through the deplaned passengers outside the TSA perimeter.

I hugged her from behind. She tried to offer an explanation as to her mysterious silence, but my lips were on hers, and so she could not really talk like a girl would want to.

We sorted things out. She had checked her carry-on bag, so we waited for it to be offloaded at Baggage Claim 14. We started to catch up with each other in person as I directed her into the cavernous parking structure to search for my vehicle.

It was around 7 PM Pacific Time, translating to 9 PM her stomach time. The eventual question came up, "Do you have an idea or plan for dinner?", she asked.

"How long have you known me? And yet you ask if I have a plan for dinner? My, we've been apart for far too long."

I exited north bound I-5 at the end of the Ship Channel Bridge and made a few extra byzantine turns through the confusing, non-orthogonal streets of this waterside Seattle neighborhood, looking for Ivar's Salmon House.

I had to ask, "Do you think Ivar's is back behind us - or should I go further down this road?"

"I think we passed it. I seem to remember it being closer to the bridge." My wife was right, of course. A reconnection with my working phone-based GPS confirmed her instincts. 

I spun the wheel around and Viola! We we right back where we both started on that glorious pre-nuptial night of March 28, 1986. We had returned. It was so fun and fitting to take my bride back to Ivar's Salmon House now that we were together in Seattle. It was just like I remembered it...

Like salmon, we return to the waters from which our journey had begun so long ago. It was good.  

About to be married - Fun in Seattle

After a night at Ivar's Salmon House
We get the married the next day.