Spectacles

I left right after school let out today to weave my way through downtown Seattle on my way to Queen Anne Hill for an eye check-up. Navigating from one end of town to the other is not easy in Seattle. Neighborhoods like Ballard and West Seattle are the long arms of the sea star that make up the city. We live in the Central District, which is, as indicated by the name, central to everything.

But nothing is central to Ballard, West Seattle, and yes, Queen Anne. So I drove circuitous routes avoiding places I knew would be jammed with buses and cars and hundreds of people crossing the street.

Queen Anne a whole different world. Living in one neighborhood insulates me from the others and when I have a chance to wander around a bit, I'm amazed how different one neighborhood is from the other.

Queen Anne is packed with expensive condos, old homes, and wide neighborhood streets. Before my appointment I walked the back streets and found little bakeries tucked next door to churches. Pricey grocery stores and trendy coffee houses line the main street. Neighbors walk by with their well-groomed dogs on a diamond-studded leash and traffic stops when people try to cross.

Nary a drug addict or a Walgreen's to be found.

Where I live, the streets are narrower and filled with potholes. Parking is an impossibility and pit bulls lunge on the end of their short chains attached to young men in over-sized black clothes. Women wander the corners of the neighborhood waiting for their dealers or their pimps, and chicken bones pepper the sidewalk as crows drop them from power and telephone lines.

There are no power or telephone lines on Queen Anne Hill. They're all buried underground.

And everywhere I looked today were white people just like me, enjoying the first warm sun we've seen in weeks.

I like my neighborhood. I like how families sit out on their porches on hot summer evenings and wave a hello with a nod and grin. I like how easy it is to hop on a bus or my bike or even walk to the library or downtown to the bookstore. I like the diversity of faces -- the Asian woman racing across the street against a red light, the elderly black woman in her wool beret and thick, bunched up socks, and the Latino man in his work clothes heading for the bus.

I never realize the deficits of my neighborhood until I venture into another one, a more upscale one with it's high-priced shops and trendy espresso stands.

Money equals power and power means you can get the city to fill your potholes, bury your power lines, and arrest the prostitutes and drug dealers -- or at least push them to the next neighborhood. With money you have voice. I could hear that voice loud and clear today while wondering the streets of Queen Anne.

After the eye appointment I stopped at the trendy grocery store to pick up some dinner and a few odds and ends I missed when I shopped this weekend.

"I'm sorry," I said to the young, African-American clerk, "I forgot my cloth bags. Can you just cram the groceries into one bag?"

"No problem!" she said with a smile. "If you spend $50 tomorrow at our store, you get cloth bags for free."

"Too bad I don't live around here," I smiled back.

"Well, we have stores all over the city. They have same offer. Where do you live?"

"I live in the Central District," I told her.

"Oh," she said and I knew she understood the greater meanings. "Guess your options are limited."

"Very," I replied.

But when I got home, I looked passed the limitations and saw the first buds on the maple trees that line the street, the old Reverend who sweeps his front walkway every day, and my neighbors walking their new baby in a stroller.

You don't know what you don't have until you see what others have and then you can either covet their haves or cherish your own.

I'm choosing to see what I have and with a new prescription for stronger glasses, I'm thankful I can see quite a lot.