A night-light in Glendale

My fuzzy, distant memories recall moving into my childhood house and neighborhood in Glendale, Arizona . . . which at that time was an isolated development surrounded by agricultural land. I remember looking out from our back patio and seeing grain silos not far away, and remembering the main street closest to our house - Peoria Avenue - lined with large, stately trees just a few streets to the East of where I lived.

Even as the housing developments filled in, and the roads turned from dirt to asphalt and began to be built through, it was still a quiet place. There were not too many other kids, and there certainly wasn't much going on. For most of my time growing up, grocery shopping was a long ways away (the Smitty's in downtown Peoria, about four miles away), and the shopping center was even further in the opposite direction. Where I lived was simply street after street of houses that all looked pretty much the same - large garage in front with a side wing of bedrooms.

Each day there was the same - I'd be dropped off at school (and school was not at all a pleasant experience for me) and then I'd be picked up again, going home for a night of math homework, perhaps watching television, and then going to sleep. This happened day in and day out, and the weekends weren't that different.

There really wasn't anywhere to go anywhere a kid could get to, so the whole of life there began to suffocate me.

I spent my whole childhood growing up in the same house, with the same routine, staying in the same place, with very little to do there and not much of anywhere to go. It would almost be like the movie, Pleasantville, except it wasn't that pleasant - not that anyone said or thought it was.

If banality could be lived out, I'm convinced that's what it would look like - growing up in Glendale, Arizona in the mid 80s.

For a good part of my childhood, I had a set of bunk beds in my room, which was an unusual thing for an only child. I think the bunk beds were given to us by a neighbor, or perhaps another family member. I don't quite recall, but I somehow ended up with two of them in my room, one stacked on the other.

This was the time that I was in the middle grades of school - probably about fourth or fifth grade. I remember because they sent home a brochure with all of the kids in school with posters that we could order that would be mailed to the school. Now, we rarely spent money on any of these types of things, but this was an exception, so I ordered a poster of the famous shot of row houses in San Francisco, with the city's skyline in back.

And I put that picture up on the wall right next to my bunk bed, so that I could see it right before I went to sleep at night, and dream of what it would be like to live in a place like that - in a city!

My bed was maybe a foot or so away from that wall, so the other thing I did was fetch a nightlight from the hallway's linen closet. It was a kind that had a switch on the front of it, so you could turn it on and off by hand. I plugged that nightlight in many nights, and I imagined that night-light was the glow of a convenience store sign, glowing and open all night, with me standing outside or above it, watching the comings and goings.

For a little while, I was able to imagine an escape from the world I inhabited - a world I experienced as bland, repetitive, pointless, even anemic - like living out an existentialist play.

What brought me some type of comfort was seeing that poster above my bed, and looking down at that night light, knowing that there was something out there more than the nothingness of that. The city was a place where something would happen, good or ill.

Not everyone experiences these things in the same way, and another individual could have an experience that is completely and totally different, with the exact opposite kind of reactions I've described. I must, however, own and love this part of my story, because it is an important part, for this seed of urban longing is what eventually grew into my deep dream of living here in Seattle, and then have the courage to realize its fulfillment of leaving everything I knew behind to come here.

It was many years ago, in Glendale, far away from skyscrapers, bustle, loud music, people, street crime, the Space Needle, traffic, panhandlers, public art, and everything - far away from any firsthand experience of anything urban - that my love and passion for city life was born in me.

For whatever reason, some things come to live inside you.

And then they are just inside you.