The Spot

The manicured grass is spongy between my toes, short and soft like a golf green. I can tell it's just damp enough to be comfortable to sit on and dry enough not to make an embarrassing wet mark on my tush.

I breathe the sunlight in through my nose, put my hands on my hips and look at my group.

"Right here, good?"

T Junior looks up at me from his umbrella stroller. "Dis?"

"Yep, this is a good spot," says my younger sister.

Auntie W is four years younger than me. She lives at the opposite end of the coast where they have dog beaches, palm trees and sunshine. (She keeps pointing this out and I keep countering with, "I swear we had sun before you got here.")

Even her lifestyle is the opposite of mine. I'm married with a kid; she's living it up as a single lady. I like the suburbs; she doesn't. The city scares me; she embraces it. I drive a minivan; she pilots a sleek sports car. I'm sticking to my natural icky brown hair color; she's a bright SoCal blonde. I struggle with being overweight; she's always been on the thinner side.

And there's this: I went to Wazzu; she attended our rival school, the U-Dub, for a year, which was just long enough for us to now take jabs at each other. (I'd like to point out, however, that I sucked it up and took her to the University of Washington's campus. I drove her down memory lane in the Odyssey with my huge Washington State University Alumni decal plastered on the back window, slowing down long enough for her to snap pictures out of the passenger side window. What? I wasn't going to stop.)

Despite our differences, though, we make a pretty good team. We packed a lot into the few days she was here and T Junior happily went along for the ride pointing out "dis" and "dat." We threw peanut shells on the floor at Jimmy Mac's, we were tourists in downtown Seattle, and we went to the 3D showing of Up where she patted me on the bicep when I couldn't suppress the tears any longer.

Today, on her last day in town, the gray has finally been swept east and ultraviolet rays are filling our pores with Vitamin D. Earlier, we parked at Bellevue Square mall and bought sandwiches at Specialties, and a mini ham and cheese quiche and a speckled "nana" for T Junior.

Now, we are kicking off our shoes at Bellevue's Downtown Park and I'm thinking maybe she'll stay for good. But I know that is about as unlikely to happen as is sunshine making its way over to Snoqualmie Falls, which is where we are headed after this impromptu picnic.

I finish eating my barbecue chicken sandwich and hand T Junior chunks of banana while Auntie W snaps photos of her nephew with a shiny hi-tech cell phone.

She was definitely right about this spot. It's a good one.