Reese Pedersen ‘25
- On a random Thursday, when the sky was mostly clear with a red sunset peeking through the clouds, I felt an urge to swim, to heck with homework. The thought of ice water against my skin was my top focus. I crossed the street, up the driveway to my cousin’s house, and down the road that winded to my grandma’s house. Her door was cracked as it always is, the aroma of freshly cooked soup seeping into the air. Stepping down her wide staircase, I heard her call, asking who it was, and I responded, “Hi, Mamie.” I was offered some soup, accepted, and sat down staring out at the Puget Sound and Olympic Mountains, waiting for her hot tub to heat up. The mountains stood like sentinels, watching the water continuously wave hello.
- In a rebellious tone, she said to me, “I was never good at school like my siblings.” On her 11th birthday, mid-school year, her parents had enough of her perennial pleas for a horse. They gave her an option: stay at Forest Ridge Academy, a school she vocally loathed, or transfer to Denny public school and receive the horse of her dreams. Of course, she chose the horse. “Big, red, handsome, and bull-headed as could be,” she called him Copper. She rode him down the streets of Seattle, listening to the clip-clop of the hooves mixed with the melody of 1950s Elvis Presley buzzing through the radio. Copper finally learned an escape route out of his hay-strewn stable, mastering the way to wander solo through the city. Calls to retrieve him from miles away replaced the homework accumulating on her desk. After Seattle Fire Department returned the horse for the third time, her parents had had enough. She said goodbye to that mahogany-colored beast and returned to Forest Ridge.
- “Do you have any homework?” she asked, somewhat teasing me. I told her I had some, but would finish it up later. She laughed and said that’s exactly what she used to say. One of her three dogs came up to me and pressed a paw against my leg, signaling for me to pet her. My fingers grazed her rough fur while her comforting old dog breath released into the kitchen. The oily residue clung to my hands. Emily in Paris played in the background and blended into the rhythm of our conversation. Our soup turned into fragments of mixed spices. “Are you going to plunge in the Puget Sound?” she wondered. Responding with “Duh,” I briskly changed into my red bikini. Following her three dogs, we walked onto the beach while she told me of the exotic waters she’d once submerged in, the cold sand seeping between and chilling our toes. “Three, two, one,” and I descended into the frigid Puget Sound.
- “I wanted to travel the world,” she told me in a nostalgic voice. As soon as she turned 20, she became a flight attendant for United Airlines. “The stewardess of the sky,” she called herself. Over the years, she toured 55 countries and all seven continents. But in the 1960s United Airlines asserted married women couldn’t fly anymore. She had two options: her career or her love for my grandpa. Betrayed by a job she adored, she left United Airlines. Together, she and my grandpa made life an adventure. Working as a travel agent and in my grandpa’s lumber company, she set foot in Bangkok, went to Tonga, Paris, and Japan. They saw it all. Then one day, 17 years later, United Airlines rang her line. She said yes.
- After my plunge, I sank into the hot tub, feeling that tingle underneath my skin. “Mamie,” I asked, “where are we exploring next?” When I was a bright-eyed toddler, my grandma took my family and me to Africa. The herbaceous grass never stopped stinging my nose, the scream of the hyenas still rings in my ears, and the curiosity about the earth has lasted a lifetime. After taking me on expeditions to 35 countries, she said with a smile that it was my decision this time. Sitting there, I reflected on where my spirit for adventure and zest for life sparked from. But the answer wasn’t far away. It was from the woman reading in the kitchen—her stories, her choices, her never-ending spirit. Next time you wonder how you came to be, where you came from, or who you are, just take a look at the people around you. For me, I stemmed from her. She was the origin of my own wanderlust and vitality.