Looking for You

After "Looking for You,"
by William Stafford.

"Looking for you through the gray rain."


In writing group, we used Stafford's poem as the basis for our own memories of a special house where we had lived. The house I wrote about was from 1967, the farmhouse Nick and I rented on Vashon Island, WN.


"Looking for you through the gray rain," the house on Vashon Island is the one I remember most fondly. It's the house we lived in when our daughter was born. The place where I was a young wife and mother.

It's the house where I read "Lord of the Rings" late at night while I waited for Nick to get home on the last ferry from Boeing's evening shift. And sometimes missed it when he got off late.

It's the house where Hallie and Alan, our hippie friends, lived down the road. And Hallie taught me to cook on an old woodstove. And Alan got arrested for public drunkenness, and I went with Hallie to bail him out.

It was the house where we had people drop in and stay a while--to my dismay, sometimes for months.

It was the house on Vashon Island, accessible only by ferry.

The house we lived in when I slipped on wet grass, as I was walking our Alaskan malamute, Shami. And had to hobble across the road to get a neighbor to take me to the doctor's office, because I couldn't use the clutch in our Jeep. Turns out my ankle was broken, and on my first visit to the obstetrician a few weeks later I was wearing a cast. The first weigh-in had to wait.

It's the house we lived in when I had to take my driver's license test in the Jeep, when I was 8 months pregnant. And the examiner said, "Pretend there's another car back there and parallel park between it and this car in front. " And so I did. And he passed me--maybe partly because he wouldn't be back on the island again before the baby was due.

The house with no shower, and when I washed my waist-length hair, I had to do it leaning over the bathtub--very pregnant. (Remember, these were the hippie years.)

Where I drove myself to the ferry in the Jeep, to go to Swedish Hospital in Seattle to have our baby. The last ferry for 2 hours at that time of day. If I'd missed it, she would have been delivered by a ferry attendant. (Yes, they knew how to deliver babies.) Where my worst fear had been that the baby would come in the middle of the night, and they would have to call out the emergency ferry from Bainbridge Island. Nick met the ferry on the Seattle side, and drove me to the hospital. She was born soon afterward.

It was the house where I locked the baby in the clunker car that I kept just to drive on the island. And panicked and broke the big window by the driver's seat to get her out.

It was the house where we could hear the scream of peacocks from the farm behind us.

And Shami brought home a dead peacock, and laid it at my feet. So proud.

And later got into the babysitter's father's sheep pen, and killed a sheep. We had to move Shami off the island ASAP. We were lucky he didn't shoot her.

The house was a farmhouse on 5 acres. We had fruit trees, and made a big vegetable garden. I made curtains, and baked bread, picked apples and made apple butter.

It was the rental farmhouse where I have wonderful memories--of happy laughing times. One of the best years of my life.


Nick, this is for you.