Water water everywhere.

A few days after I was born, my mom took me for my first 'bath,' in their hot tub. This was in El Paso, where my dad was stationed at the time. A few weeks later, we moved to a town outside of Seattle, and I lived in Seattle from 1999-2013.

In Seattle, I knew no other way to navigate than by water. To the west was the Puget Sound and beyond that a couple hours drive was the Pacific. To the the east, at least in the neighborhood I lived in, was Lake Washington. And I'm not even mentioning Lake Union, or the Columbia, which divides Washington from Oregon. Lake Washington is big enough that to drive around it in good traffic would take about 40 minutes. It's big enough that there is an island in the middle of it large enough to be a separate city- a weird, old, rich little city that's home to billionaires like Paul Allen and also crotchety folks hanging on to their modest little houses on the island for years and years, despite the appeal of selling for a profit. That island, Mercer Island, is where I worked for 8 years total including 6 years of fulltime work.

In Seattle, you are always ending up stuck in traffic somewhere due to a body of water. On the way to rehearsal, the Ballard bridge or the University bridge go up for what seems like a ridiculous amount of time, and all the cars are stopped as a yacht or a tugboat or a cargo ship passes through. The neighborhoods of Magnolia and Queen Anne are cut off somewhat because there is no bridge and a couple of tiny busy roads getting into and out of them. Every summer there was a week in July where I would end up on certain days stuck on Mercer Island for 13 hours at a time because the bridges were shut down to practice an air show for Seafair. An event that includes racing using hydroplanes. On, you guessed it, the water.

Water, water everywhere.

New York had me stymied for the longest time because the system of navigation is so unrelated to nature. North is uptown, south is downtown, etc. Downtown you eventually get to Brooklyn, uptown you eventually get to the Bronx. I would get off of the subway and be surrounded by metal and have to squint my eyes to see a street sign so I could tell what direction I was facing. I'm getting it little by little. But the more I feel the sense of the city and how to navigate it, the more I realize I'm falling back into old ways of being. Head east in Manhattan and you get to the East River (cleverly named!). Head west and you get to the Hudson. Head north and you get to the Harlem river. Head south and you get to a convergence of the Hudson and the East River and then, if you go south or east enough, you get to the Atlantic. The other ocean. On the other side of the continent from home.

The other day I had to get quickly from Union Square to the West Village for a class and my phone had died so I couldn't double check directions. I was walking, and I vaguely knew the way, until I got to that part of the Village where they completely throw the grid out the window. Despite this, I found my way and didn't even take any weird wrong turns. I'm sure part of me was driven by memory, but part of me was definitely navigating by water. I could feel the presence of the Hudson the closer that I got to it. I found school and took a quick glance across the highway to the Hudson, across from which is an entirely different state.

I don't know if it's me or my hometown. I don't know if it's a part of my chemistry, or just something that feels more relevant than man-made grids. But I do know that the ability to sense the direction of water, and to navigate by it, has made me feel less homesick than I have in the past 13 months.

Now if only I could find a reliable hot tub to dip into now and again, I'd really be completing the cycle.