Let’s take a drive, I suggested. Sounds like a line out of the Sopranos, but in actuality, it was just me, and my mom, with a few hours to kill in Seattle last weekend before my niece’s wedding. Neither of us had been to our hometown in some time, and I wanted to see what had become of one of my former houses. And she wanted to see the house I grew up in, one she’d lived in for over 40 years. We suspected we’d be in for some surprises, and both houses delivered. Wide-eyed and agape by the end of our tour, we looked at each other and agreed that indeed, both houses had been offed by the gentrification mafia.

We started our tour in Blue Ridge, a neighborhood in north Seattle overlooking the Puget Sound with good sized lots, hills, climbable trees and memories of swim team meets that awarded me lots of last place ribbons. (I still swim, but long, slow, distance is my jam). Mom knew when she sold the house six years ago that the owners planned to gut it. “But we love the views! The neighborhood!” they promised, and during the then hot real estate market, they paid enough jack to obliterate any sadness around what their architect had drawn up. It was a stroke of fate that we got inside the house. Walking by, the new owner was pulling into the driveway. Mom said hello, explained who we were, and asked if we could take a look inside. Of course you can, and pardon any clutter, the new owner offered. I’d been gone long enough to marvel at the designer chef’s kitchen that was once a library without any emotion, but not so for mom. That library was built nearly single-handedly by my late designer step-father, who filled it with several Asian treasures, book collections, and a wood burning fireplace holding endless family gathering memories.

“Wanna keep going?” I asked mom, after staring at a 6-burner gas stove sitting where a glass case housing my late father’s jade collection once stood. Yes, she said, as we walked through the then-kitchen/now-mudroom, and upstairs into the master bedroom with a spectacular balcony my parents always dreamed of building, but couldn’t justify the cost. No room was left intact. A beautiful renovation, but damn..WTF happens to my house?

You sell, you say sayonara

I suppose everyone who sells a house rues what will become of it. It’s the biggest purchase of our lives, we spend our most intimate moments there, and memories accumulate quickly. Sell it, and out the literal and figurative door it all goes. Regardless what the new owners do or don’t do to the brick and mortar. Since living in two condos, six houses, and I-stopped-counting apartments in multiple cities on both coasts, I know I’ve sucker-punched my share of previous owner memories with each home I’ve moved into. But I’ve been through it enough to say sayonara to letting inanimate structures take over my emotions. I save those for learning and growing from broken relationships, savoring in-the-moment experiences with living souls (my family and pets), and crying over missing extended family members I can’t see everyday.

I can’t see the water

Next stop on our tour took us down a narrow lane on a bay approaching the Ballard Locks. Also known as Salmon Bay. I lived there from 2000-2007, with a former spouse who dreamed of living on the water. At the time, homes along here maxed out at about 2000 sf. Ours was a 50s-era cinder block bungalow with 2 bedrooms and a rosemary bush out front I battled to keep in check. It was humble, but at the time, affordable and included 50 feet of waterfront and views of fishing boats, tugs, and blue herons as our constant entertainment.

“Wait, is that your house?” Yeah, mom. That’s the one. It took me a minute, though. Had to double check the address number. The number on the copper-toned, iron wrought gate with some kind of salmon cut-out (“is it supposed to be art? A sculpture?” Dunno, mom.) The gate extended to the driveway I remember, leading to a detached garage below. I went to Zillow and saw that our former garage was now an extension of interior living space. The soft Heather gray exterior paint on the cinder blocks was now some sort of flat siding in a color I can only describe as murky blue. But at least the rosemary bush was gone.

The houses around it had all been expanded..widened, heightened with another story. To the degree I couldn’t see the water view between them. Cars crowded the narrow lane. “Was it always like this?” Don’t think so mom. The word that came to mind was bloat. Like a dead body tossed in the sea by the mafia.

Seemed to mom and I that everything we saw on our tour felt bloated. Bigger, tighter, multi-unit houses. More parallel parked cars crowding Seattle’s residential streets. For sale signs with nothing under a million, two million dollar price tags.

Big changes. But big, beautiful memories too. No amount of gentrification can take away that.