At Large in Ballard by Peggy Sturdivant

I spent the day before Thanksgiving almost everywhere except Ballard, finally coming home to roost by way of the Ballard Market. A series of errands inadvertently took me on tour of neighborhoods that comprise my Seattle past; no wonder I felt so wistful by the time I finally reached home.

My day started with breakfast on lower Queen Anne with an old friend. I've known Lance for almost 24 years, ever since I was introduced to him in Southern California on my second date with Jim - as Lance hoisted an engine from a car in a friend's auto shop. In those days people still worked on their cars, rebuilt them, replaced their belts. Little did I know when I met Jim's best friend I would be inheriting him - that he would one day move to Seattle when Jim was ill, move to the neighborhood, take Emily to her first ballet lesson, present her with her first bicycle - rebuilt of course.

After Queen Anne, there was South Lake Union and Eastlake Avenue where I worked for seven years, riding my bicycle there and back in the days when the Burke Gilman Trail didn't come close enough to Ballard to be missing a link. Queen Anne - the starter apartment and then seven years working from an office that overlooked the Kentucky Fried Chicken on West Mercer. Years of office friendships, most of them left behind like files discarded in recycle boxes.

All day I was a ghost visiting the past, invisible to those around me. I saw my sophomore year college roommate walking her children into a daycare at the end of my block but she didn't see me. It's six years now since I first overheard her St. Louis twang in the old Ballard library. I hadn't seen her since 1982 in Connecticut but there she was living four blocks from me - such is the power of Ballard to draw our pasts into the present, connect all the dots.

While passing through Wallingford I saw an older black man with a limp by the Boulangerie Bakery corner and tried to determine if he was a person with a home. A man from inside came to the doorway and held out a tall, lidded coffee cup. The man took the cup, reached to shake the owner's hand, then couldn't seem to help himself from turning that into a hug. It was as though I could feel the warmth of the coffee inside my own hand.

Finally I sat alone at a small table in front of Ballard Market warming in a mocha and unexpected pre-holiday gentleness between strangers. In the Equal Exchange Caf/, who should enter but the former mail carrier from our block; he didn't wear long pants even if it snowed. Never one to chat or smile he was a constant through years that brought cards of congratulation, condolence and the birthdays taking Emily from Fabulous Five to Sweet Sixteen. Then he transferred and left us; replaced by a young man who wears legging beneath the postal shorts. "He should be reported," our former carrier remarked; legs naked as ever.

By the time I returned home to an empty house I was seeking out the past like a museum visitor - the cold year at the zoo, the time I ordered coconut cream pie from The Yankee Diner and we ate lobster tail instead of turkey, wet walks in the rain while the rolls were rising, the year that I had a fever and the oven element flamed and died. But what I could see at every memory was Emily's face - framed by the Shirley Temple curls of her first years, the tight bun from the Miss Louise ballet years. Emily and her friend Becky posing in ruffled dresses at age five. I unpacked the comparatively few groceries that I'd acquired - yeast and flour for my grandmother's recipe milk rolls and cherries for a pie. I reached for the phone and left a message for the family of Emily's first best friend. When did it get to be so many months since we've even spoken?

There had been a certain excitement out in the world as shoppers weighed their sweet potatoes and boiling onions, chose their bag of cranberries, preparing for a uniquely American holiday that while not without controversy is not about gifts or decorations, wars or slain leaders, just gathering with friends and family, neighbors and ghosts. I love that it's almost impossible to shop other than at 7-11 on Thanksgiving - but still possible to pass a cup of something hot to a friend, or stranger.

Thanksgiving morning I woke to an empty house, except for the cat. I revisited my past yet again, the Audubon Sanctuary walks with my family, the twenty years in Seattle, concluding that I've never been alone before on this day. Next door my neighbor was raking leaves from the frozen grass. "I miss my baby," she said and I understood that she is not missing her grown daughter so much as missing her daughter's childhood. It's not that we're sad when we look across the table and see our children almost grown or our parents suddenly aged. It's just that we want to still be able to look at all of the faces, the one year old in a high chair, the teenager before they turned surly, old friends who moved away, faces of grandparents before they were just photographs and memories.

Across the entire country and in our city, everyone positions themselves, shifting and exchanging bodies from east to west, snatching up the same supplies across the country as though everyone was expecting the same storm. Then, after the last traffic jam, it's quiet. When everyone is settled it is the day of the year when we finally stop and look at those who are sitting with us in person, and pine for the faces from the past.

Peggy's email is atlargeinballard@yahoo.com. She writes additional pieces on her Seattle PI Webtown blog At Large in Ballard at http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/ballard/