From Tacoma, With Love
When we launched the Ten of Us project last year, we wanted to explore the idea of the 253 as “home” - and what that meant for the range of people who live here.
For those of us who were born and raised in the Hilltop, who are living in the house their grandparents left to them.
For those of us who are recent transplants, following the siren’s song of the rain and the gentle waves on Commencement Bay.
For those of us who moved to the 253 in our youth - who can remember a childhood in another place, but have never felt comfortable saying “that’s where I’m from.”
One way or another, we’ve all arrived here, clustered around the shores of the Puget Sound. And at some point, we started saying “this is my home.”
For Bryson and myself, this city became home when our oldest daughter came into the world. She was born in our one-bedroom apartment in Hilltop - an old soul who immediately opened her eyes and looked around like, “Oh, look - here I am again.”
“One way or another, we’ve all arrived here, clustered around the shores of the Puget Sound. And at some point, we started saying “this is my home.” ”
Something about having a child with immediate roots in this city suddenly made us feel rooted, too. Suddenly, we had to build a community around our little girl - a specifically Tacoma-based community, with friends and babysitters and neighbors who hand out Otter Pops on hot days. We had to join PTA and play groups. We had to plan coffee with other parents so we could sit together and say, exasperated, “This is crazy, right?”
Our actions in raising our children became a silent prayer to the community: “Please embrace our girl. Please love her as much as we do.”
We met Shaidaja through the writing and poetry community in Tacoma; and recently, we’ve gotten to know her as a new mother.
We approached Shaidaja with this concept: a letter from our city to our children. An answer to the prayers we whispered at their birth, and every day since then: Please take care of these kids. Please help us raise them.
And Shaidaja, as a new mother, immediately understood. She took that concept and wrote a piece for her son, from her community, that brought all of us as parents back to that moment - those early moments when we wanted so badly for everyone and everything in the world to open up for them.
We want to thank Shaidaja for her willingness to share her words - and her beautiful family - with the FC crew.
And thanks to the 253 for loving our children right along with us.
