By Peggy Sturdivant

It was that kind of bright, beautiful day in November that you know is one of the last. The remaining leaves on the trees looked extra bright; triumphant they had survived the first windstorm. All the mountains were out. I decided to walk the mile-and-a-half to downtown Ballard.

After watching all the modern box houses rise like children’s blocks near 28th & 64th NW I didn’t think there was anything left to surprise me there. I was wrong. The beloved tree with fort on the southeast corner wasn’t just gone; it was as though tree and the little yellow house had never been there. The rectangular hole covers the entire lot.

From that corner on, everything about Ballard looked different to me, as though I was wearing special glasses to capture so many things on the brink of change: five leaves remaining on one Full Moon Maple, the round-cheeked baby in the passing stroller who would be walking by spring.

At Ballard Commons Park at least 12 people were lying in the sun, either on benches or on blankets on the still lush green grass. “I’m getting older,” a man said. Realizing I’d heard, he addressed me, “I didn’t say I’m getting older.” Another man with his back to the skate bowl laughed at that, then asked ‘spare a few dollars?’

At the library I made my way past the “second seating” of Monday’s infant story time. The lobby was already lined on one side with very upright and high-end looking baby carriages. On recent Mondays I’ve been shocked seeing the meeting room wall-to-wall with baby blankets and parents. I learned the library has added a second baby story time due to demand. They’re still worried that any week now they will have to turn people away.

Almost every computer in the library was taken, except for one or two that only access the catalog. When I left the library at 12:55 p.m. the lobby was a stroller parking lot, with more rolling in the door.

After I made it through the incoming mothers and a few fathers I looked kitty corner to Ballard Commons. I thought, it doesn’t matter if these are people who are living in their cars or in shelters. Everyone deserves to have a place. At that moment theirs was still warm from the 10th of November sun.

But how many ‘Ballards’ are do we have now? How many variations of “haves” versus “have nots?” How many of us could afford to buy here again? How many of us can’t afford to live here anymore?

I looked across at Bartell Drugs, counted in my head, in 68 days they will lock their doors on that location. It was exactly a week since they’d put out temporary orange parking barricades so drivers could pull up to deposit their ballots. Mid-term elections are over but King County votes are still being counted. Will there be more Rapid Ride buses, smaller class sizes, fewer shootings?

In five more days it would be the second enrollment period of the Affordable Care Act, and in six days, the ten year anniversary of when my husband and I first become aware of each other’s existence. I’d seen a Navy ship sailing north that morning with the most enormous American flag I’ve ever seen on a vessel that size. The USS Ingraham would be decommissioned just two days later, after 25 years, “scrapped” in Everett, but I didn’t know that then.

It was two days before the Ballard Chamber lunch with Mayor Ed Murray and a few days after another opportunity for citizens to put stickers on Department of Planning & Development signboards about the planning process for our “urban village.” But none of the signboards discussed issues that weigh on some of us more: the scale of houses in streets still zoned for residential, a large transient population, the definition of “affordable” housing…

It was the night before the shutters on the bright pink Paseo’s location on Shilshole wouldn’t be opened, but we didn’t know that yet. Just three days earlier I’d inhaled the smell of onions from the bike trail above. We’d been warned it was the last day before our first hard frost; in the morning the windshield would need to be scraped.

The sun set while I walked homeward, due west. I noticed Joel of Market Street passing by with a balloon, the ding of the crosswalk at Ballard & Market, the Fenpro Building still standing, the vacant lot by Windemere dry, unlike the permanent pond across from Ballard Blocks. One of the brothers at Limback Lumber drew the warehouse door closed, like a final curtain. Along all the alleys and sidewalks people were pulling out the Tuesday trinity of recycle, trash and yard waste cans, as though everyone knew it was last call in Ballard.