Goodbye, SLC

My life lived in Utah was beautiful — full of tears and anger and stupid mistakes, unrequited love, heartache, grass stains, junk food and Mountain Dew — my friends and I used to walk around our neighborhood like we owned it. The ice cream man knew our order: one SpongeBob pop with bubblegum eyeballs and a Super Lucas Limón Con Chile (in 2005 these were removed from the truck because they were giving kids lead poisoning). We were also notorious for ding-dong-ditching houses, yelling at strangers, trespassing, and trick-or-treating in July.

Although the timeline is blurry, one year, my neighborhood best friend, Beverly and I came across a tree house perched in the front yard of a house kitty-corner to both of ours.

Instinctively, we climbed up the ladder and sat in this foreign place for hours.

I don’t remember who first came up with the idea, but, by the end of the day we had decided that the atmosphere was both boring and wanting for color. We wandered back to Bev’s house to grab two buckets of paint, one bright white and the other lime green. The next day, I prepared two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, hopped on my Razor scooter, and we met back at the tree house promptly at 11:30am. Beverly and I spent the entire day painting. And, by 4:00pm our work was done. We were sweaty, filthy, and our hair? Destroyed. I still remember shamefully smirking sitting in the shower while my mom pinched the paint out, strand by strand. 

Early on in my senior year of high school, I spent less and less time walking around the neighborhood and more and more time in downtown Salt Lake. I would drive down from the University of Utah’s hospital, exhausted and eyes bloodshot; the city was my only release from the white walls of the ICU waiting room. I found comfort in the city’s coffee shops and unfamiliarity. Indeed, it was at this time where I fell in love with specialty coffee and the magic of the cappuccino. In the ensuing months, right before I moved to Tacoma, Salt Lake City became my favorite place in the world. (I suppose that’s what happens when you know you’re about to leave somewhere special, you see all of its glory all at once and it breaks your heart even more to say goodbye.)

I flew into Salt Lake for my trip of goodbyes early Monday morning and quite frankly it’s the worst thing I have ever had to do.

Where ought I spend my time?

How ought I spend my time?

I want to be alone with the city I love. I want to spend every waking moment with my mom and my fourteen-year old-dog, Sadie. I want to spend time with my best friends. But, I also want to catch up with folks I have not seen in years. I want to walk around my neighborhood and sing Christmas carols and collect candy. I want to drive up and down Bangerter Highway from sunrise to sunset and hope that the highway hypnosis helps me forget that by Friday I will have said goodbye to my big brother, my cat, my favorite coffee shop, to this stupid city and all its stupid beautiful people, with no idea of when I will be back to say hello again.

I want to sit in that tree house, just one last time.

I know that I am only leaving for a year and I know that Salt Lake City will still be here when I get back, I do. But, this trip to Utah feels different. I imagine that “Watson Fellows” become really good at goodbyes – I am still choking down the yellow paint from the first blog post, I am still pinching out the paint from my hair from that tree house – it was taken down years ago. Only one rung of the ladder remains.