6:50 a.m. in Phinney Ridge
6:50 a.m. in Phinney Ridge is when I study the softness of sidewalks. If Texas—my previous home—were an encompassing ray of gold, the sun fatigued from shouldering the summer heat, Washington is steeped in indigo, its murk testing the tenderness in my bones. The winter isn’t dark, the neighbors say, it’s cozy.
After nine months spent traveling up the West Coast, I was stopped by the softness of Seattle— a softness I see even on the underbelly of evergreens as the sun peeks out to flourish them through clouds thicker than my beanie. I am walking to the coffee shop two blocks from my new house to drink pumpkin coffee, a seasonal indulgence that never felt fitting in the arduous Austin heat. Here, however, it feels just right.
Phinney is still blinking its eyes open at this hour, as if rest is a prize and everyone has won. Alongside the evergreens, my vision speckles with cascading colors of the deciduous, shimmying on branches older than these sidewalks. I stop and watch the colors fall, for a moment seeing the heavy forest that historically engulfed this rapidly balding ridge. I watch a few others stroll by this scene; they don’t seem too compelled to stop and wonder whether these trees are only a footprint of the past.
I continue toward the brilliant light of the open shop at the end of the street—a beacon in the abyss of my clammy indigo—and I, as I do, wonder how these neighbors take their coffee, how they greet the gloom. Yet without the same blanketing gloom that initially uneased me about calling this place home, I would not have experienced the deepest comforts of community. After our moving truck pulled away, these neighbors' hands carried gifts to me of yellow and orange flowers in mason jars and fiery morsels of vine-grown cherry tomatoes in old deli containers. From being an unknown traveler for nearly a year, moving through space and time unrecognized, such gracious endowments feel strange to me. I am able to receive because I am being received. What makes a place feel like a home? I ask myself constantly. The quest for an answer was why I decided to leave Texas in the first place. At the burst of a sweet tomato, the gaze of a perky pistil, and the gingerly embrace of being safely perceived, I at last feel closer to an answer.
Cold pumpkin coffee trails down my throat as I survey the young heads with pigtails, old shoulders with knits, and pups tucking into generous cups of whipped cream. Since arriving in Washington, I’ve returned more times to this coffee shop in the last month than I have any other place this entire year. Among its bare rudiments, its uncountable quirks, I am no longer a stranger. I arise from my chair and sweep a checkered scarf over the chill on my neck. As I drop my cup into the trash, I can hear it join the others with a tender rattle, having found the softest place to land.
About the Author
Lindsey Otto is a writer and creative based in Seattle, Washington. Her newsletter, Let It Simmer, explores how our experiences with food shape identity, community, and culture. Find her work at lindseyotto.substack.com and follow her on Instagram @lindsotto.
Illustration by Jane Demarest.
Edited by Aube Rey Lescure .
