Choosing Magnolia
By Yuko Enomoto
From Mount Fuji to Mount Rainier: Discovering my spiritual home
I still remember our first drive into Magnolia Village, mid-August 2002. We parked at an angle by Tully’s on the corner of 33rd and McGraw, then walked to the gas station across the street to buy some drinks for the kids—ages 5 and 21 months. We had just moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Lower Queen Anne, and that afternoon, my husband Bruce wanted us to check out Magnolia as a potential neighborhood for our future home.
We grabbed our drinks and began slowly driving through Magnolia, past rows and rows of pretty houses with neat front lawns. As we cruised down Dravus, headed toward Queen Anne, Malvina Reynolds’s song “Little Boxes” started playing through my head. It was an unfair characterization because the houses really didn’t look the same, nor were they little. I just wasn’t ready for suburban life. “Nope, not living here,” I thought. And it’s funny, because in fewer than four months, we’d be living in one of those little boxes to begin our life as Magnolians, and the Village would become the locus of my professional and spiritual life.
In early March of 2002, five months before we moved to Seattle, my mother lost her battle with stomach cancer and took her last breath in a hospital bed in Tokyo, Japan. My American husband Bruce and I had been discussing moving from Japan for quite a while, and it felt like a good time to leave. We were a bit burned out by Tokyo and needed either a change of scenery or a bit more space in our lives—both physically and mentally. We considered a lot of places but decided on the US. We had friends and family there, so it made sense.
Making a list of places to live
While brainstorming our next move one evening, Bruce pulled out two sheets of paper, handed me one, and said, “Make a list of all the places you want to live in the US, and I’ll make mine. We can compare notes in a few days.” As a city girl, I had the big cities at the top of my list. I always envisioned my future amid skyscrapers, museums, cafes, and boutiques—even with kids in tow. But beneath the famed urban centers, I wrote Seattle and Portland. For reasons I can’t explain, I had a warm feeling about the Pacific Northwest. Maybe because in my previous work as a reporter covering the futures markets for grains and oilseeds, I came across the term Ex-PNW dozens of times a day. Those cities also topped my husband’s list. Soon after we narrowed down our preferences to Seattle and Portland, I found out I was pregnant with child number three.
We realized we had to be in either Portland or Seattle by August at the latest so that we could enroll Kimi in kindergarten. Any later and our plans to move would be extensively delayed by the start of school and birth of child three. Bruce soon left on a reconnaissance trip. He booked a flight to Seattle and checked out the city and the various neighborhoods, especially Queen Anne, which came recommended from a Seattleite friend who lived in Tokyo. Bruce did a lot of walking, declaring, “it’s the best way to get to know a place.”
Bruce returned with a glowing review of Seattle. He had even gone to John Hay, the elementary school our friend Stacy recommended, talked to the principal about our plans, and then walked all the way toward downtown to gauge the city’s safety. “It’s a beautiful and safe place. I think you’ll really like it there,” he reported back. We spent the next few months in Japan getting our documents together, packing all our belongings, completing childhood vaccinations, enrolling Kimi at John Hay, and connecting with a Seattle midwife through my Japanese midwife. I knew I wanted a home birth.
Love at first sight
We flew out to Seattle in mid-August and stayed in a hotel downtown while we scoped out the neighborhoods.
While we awaited our apartment move-in date, we drove down to Portland to check it out, just in case. It was a gorgeous summer that year. We stopped at every park to let the kids run around and blow off steam. The city still felt a bit urban, while offering many parks and family-oriented activities. We were falling in love with the friendly and quirky vibe of Portland, but I was still leaning more toward Seattle.
We left Portland and began driving north. A few hours later, we hit the Alaskan Way Viaduct, and downtown Seattle came into view. The approach into Seattle on the viaduct at the time felt a bit like a compact and humbler version of Lake Shore Drive’s ascent into downtown Chicago. I think it was then that I said, “Ooh, we’re definitely going to live here.” To this city girl, nothing tugged at the heartstrings like a dramatic unveiling of towering skyscrapers against a big skyline. Bruce turned to the kids sitting in the back and said, “It’s been decided! We’re living in Seattle!” The kids cheered, sensing our joy.
Once we moved into our temporary apartment in Queen Anne, life was anything but skyscrapers, cafes, and museums. Within a few weeks, Kimi started kindergarten, and I went into house-hunting mode; my nesting instincts were kicking in big time. We thought we could wait on buying a house but quickly realized that a two-bedroom apartment wouldn’t suffice for a soon-to-be family of five. We had a rough three months.
Settling in but not yet settled
I was still not ready to give up my vision of an urban life. Having spent most of my life in Tokyo, Japan (with the exception of a few years in Los Angeles as a child), I was still a city girl through and through.
Also, I was in my thirties and bristled at the idea of “settling” in what I thought was a sleepy residential neighborhood. So, after touring Magnolia, I decided that Capitol Hill was my first choice. The neighborhood felt exciting, urban, and walkable. But I was naive about family life in the US. You could also say I was in denial about how much our life was about to change.
Bruce had grown up in a beautiful suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, and wanted to give our children that same experience. “I want them to have a backyard, the way I grew up,” he’d say, recalling idyllic summers running through sprinklers, and winters jumping into pristine snow and making snow angels. But ever the selfless one of the two of us, he seemed ready to let go of it, and agreed to tour a three-bedroom condo in the heart of Capitol Hill just weeks before we became a family of five.
The condo was spacious—by Tokyo standards—and I loved how it was modern, newly constructed, and conveniently located. I struck up a conversation with the nice realtor who was showing the space. I told her we had just moved from Tokyo and asked how many families lived in the building. After a short pause, she politely responded, “I don’t think there are any. Families don’t really live in condos in America.” When I asked her why, she looked at me quizzically, as if I had suddenly spoken a foreign language.
A few days later, we went to an open house for a smart-looking single-family home in Magnolia. It had been built in 1955 during the rapid rise of the American middle class and had a mid-century feel. The architect had also designed and built the neighboring homes on either side. With seemingly no updates done since the 1980s, the house needed some work. But I was immediately drawn to its location: across the street from a park and a small field for soccer and baseball. It also had a little treehouse in a sheltered backyard with a patio. Bruce approved. We went to our realtor’s downtown office in the afternoon of December 2, 2002, to close on the house. I felt lightheaded all day. Just past midnight, I went into labor, and a few hours later, we welcomed Kenzo into the world. He was born at our temporary place in Queen Anne; it wasn’t quite four a.m.
Magnolia it is
At that point, as a mom of three kids under the age of five, I was a bit confused by my pining for a city life I had little use for. Our days were filled with volunteer work, coffee time with other moms, playdates, part-time translation work, and the occasional date night. With little family support, Bruce and I relied on our small backyard and the park across the street for the family’s well-being and sanity. Those long summer days spent outside are now among the most cherished memories my adult children have of their childhood.
Family Day at Kimi’s kindergarten at John Hay Elementary, 2003.
Left to right: Bruce, Kade, Kimi, and Yuko with Kenzo in a sling.
Courtesy of Yuko Enomoto.
When we moved into our home in Magnolia, Kenzo was one month old, Kade had just turned two, and Kimi was five. Those early days were a blur. I felt tired constantly, my back ached, and I was having health issues that finally forced me to seek help. One day, discouraged by the cumbersome healthcare system, I walked to the Village and took a yoga class. I eventually made an appointment with a physician, but stumped, she suggested more thorough testing and sent me home.
By my second yoga class at The Yoga Studio in Magnolia, I was starting to feel better. After a month or so of regular classes, my symptoms were disappearing, and my backache was almost gone. It occurred to me then that I didn’t give myself a lot of time to slow down and heal. Leading up to our move to Seattle, this was the timeline of my life:
March 2000: Pregnant with Kade
June 2000: My father has a stroke and is hospitalized
July 2000: My mother is diagnosed with stomach cancer and eighty percent of her stomach is removed
September 2000: Due to a hospital mishap, my father falls and breaks his hip
October 2000: My father passes away
December 2000: Kade is born
After Kade was born, my mother got to spend a full year with him before the cancer came back, this time in the colon. She got sick again in mid-December of 2001 and died in mid-March the following year. My mother loved food and eating, which made her stomach cancer diagnosis, and the ensuing drastic change in food intake, all the more disheartening to her. Before she slipped into unconsciousness, never to awaken, I had many chances to chat with her. One time I asked her what her most cherished life moments were, and she said without hesitation: “That moment when you just ordered your meal at your favorite restaurant and you’re waiting for it to arrive.”
Magnolia feels like home
I began to attend yoga classes frequently. It gave me peace of mind, time to grieve the loss of my parents, and space to acknowledge the rapid changes in my life circumstances. Bruce began taking classes there soon after, intrigued by the benefits he witnessed in me. I wanted to learn more, so I completed a training program there and started teaching weekly classes in 2007, then two classes a week and eventually more.
Shortly after we arrived in Seattle, Bruce left his magazine editing job and launched a publishing company, Chin Music Press, encouraged by the strong indie book culture in the US. For Chin Music’s inaugural title, he wanted to pay tribute to a side of Japan that is underrepresented in contemporary writings about the country. So, he collected nonfiction pieces, short stories, recipes, art, cowboy poetry, and other eclectic elements of modern-day Japan into his first book, Kuhaku. Kuhaku is a Japanese word that means “void,” but here the word serves as a celebration of the vast space the majority of Japanese people occupy, between the stereotypes of the Salaryman and the Samurai, the Office Lady and the Geisha.
In the early days of Chin Music Press, Bruce worked out of his basement office. It was helpful having him around. In a pinch, I could ask him to take a break from work and watch the kids while I showered or ran errands. Then the basement flooded one day, and he moved into a community workspace in Frelard, a $170-per-month windowless space that looked more like the interior of a U-Haul than an office. After visiting his office, a neighbor in the same building said, “Well, if this doesn’t work out for you, it’s a great place to kill yourself.” Not funny! Soon after, he moved to a bigger space near the Lenin statue in Fremont at the urging of his newly hired publicist. He eventually left there, too, for an even bigger space with lots of light in the Pike Place Market and opened a joint showroom and bookstore.
With Bruce no longer at home and the two older kids at school, I began a routine of strapping my youngest son into the back of the car and driving to Magnolia’s drive-through coffee stand at the gas station. I’d turn on KPLU, sip my coffee, and cruise around until he fell asleep. I often parked the car at the Bluff and gazed out the window while he slept. On nice days, I’d carry him in my BabyBjörn and weave in and out of the Village to Around the World antique shop, where I purchased our first Christmas decorations and heirloom holiday wreath; Upper Crust Bakery (now Petit Pierre) for bread; and Caffe Appassionato for a latte, where I once purchased a painting of Discovery Park by a local Magnolia artist.
Left to right: Kenzo (5), Kimi (10), and Kade (7) at home in Magnolia, 2007.
Courtesy of Yuko Enomoto.
By 2004, Seattle became the rendezvous spot for the extended family. Being an only child, I had no immediate family left, but Bruce’s brother, Dave, lived in New Orleans, and his parents, Bobby and Ginnie, lived in Cleveland. Every winter, they flew out to Seattle to spend Christmas with us and shower the kids with gifts.
In 2005, Bobby and Ginnie—in their mid-seventies at the time—made the big decision to move to Seattle. They seemed ready and excited to be close to their grandchildren and have new adventures in a new city. Bobby handled the transition well, but the move proved to be overwhelming for Ginnie. Her physical and mental health began deteriorating almost as soon as she moved out here.
After several years of condo living in Ballard, it became clear that they, especially Ginnie, needed assistance. They moved to Bayview Retirement Community in Queen Anne and spent their remaining years there. During Ginnie’s final weeks, COVID was raging, so we saw very little of her due to restrictions. We were more fortunate with Bobby and spent meaningful time with him during his remaining weeks and days. Before he was bedridden and mostly asleep, Bobby liked to look out the window and people watch. He often said, “People in Seattle are so tall!” We all agreed that he was just getting shorter. Toward the end of his life, our visits consisted of very little talk, just the classical music he loved on his CD player and being in each other’s presence. After he died peacefully, one of his nurses gave us a picture of him at his most recent birthday celebration. In the photo, Bobby, who is saturnine in disposition, looked radiant, wearing the biggest smile I had ever seen on his face. It makes me happy to know that although Ginnie struggled, Bobby found that level of joy at the end of his life. This gives me hope for my looming senior years.
At Kimi’s graduation from the University of Washington, 2019.
Left to right: Kenzo, Yuko, Kimi, Kade, Bruce, and Dave.
Courtesy of Yuko Enomoto.
From Mount Fuji to Mount Rainier: Discovering what home means
Kimi was four when we left Tokyo. She’s the only sibling who remembers it. Kade was also born in Tokyo but left too young to have a memory of life there.
Born in Queen Anne, Kenzo didn’t identify much with his Japanese roots until he was well into middle or high school. This is not surprising. As a Japanese person who attended international schools and grew up in a nontraditional environment, I never felt fully Japanese myself. That meant I didn’t intentionally remind him or our other kids of their Japanese-ness nor attach it to their identities—perhaps to a fault. My two older kids have told me that they wished I had at least spoken more Japanese to them when they were growing up. They would certainly be bilingual by now, they said.
The kids were left to explore and discover on their own what it meant to be part Japanese in America. If anyone, my American husband from Ohio is the one who embodies the energy of all things Japanese. He travels to Japan frequently, and because of his work, he is well connected to the Japanese and Japanese American communities here. Me? I’ve been back to Japan only once in the twenty-two years we’ve lived here. We often joke about how Bruce is the most Japanese of the family.
Because of my background, I adapted to life in Seattle with ease. Parenting, however, was a whole other matter, especially with our firstborn. I expected Kimi to walk to kindergarten on her own, as I did back home. I was oblivious to the evolving language around body issues here and have made insensitive comments to her about her weight and eating habits in almost the exact same way they were said to me as a teen. Despite my international upbringing, my messaging was heavily influenced by, and rooted in, the sexism of Japanese culture. Saying in Japanese, “You’re gonna get fat by the way you’re eating” carries with it a tone of worry, care, and tough love that is largely absent in the English language, in which it sounds mainly judgmental.
Mount Fuji and Lake Kawaguchi. Mount Rainier now stands in for Mount Fuji for me.
Luke Stackpoole for Getty Images. 2022. Unsplash.
Sometimes I wonder how life would be different had we not left Japan. I love my country, but we have no regrets. We knew that our mixed-race kids could face bullying in a homogenous society like Japan, and we would be better accepted in a more progressive city like Seattle. Indie book publishing was practically nonexistent as a business in Japan. Kimi wouldn’t have been able to push the limits of her talent in the field of arts and entertainment; Kade wouldn’t have found robust social and medical support for his transition to a man, even as that type of support is facing pushback in the current political climate; and Kenzo couldn’t have followed his curiosity after high school to find his path in music. As much as Japan is a benevolent country in many ways, it doesn’t take too kindly to folks like us who tend to veer a bit from the norm.
I also never take for granted the privilege of being close to the water and surrounded by mountains. During my first-ever visit back in the late 1980s, I remember thinking that Seattle looked like a gigantic golf course by the water as we began our descent into Sea-Tac. I was probably gazing down at Discovery Park at the time, never realizing that decades later it would be our home away from home—where we admired the water and the sunset and the moon, had family photo shoots, spilled tea with friends on long hikes, said quiet prayers on solitary walks, did our walking meditations or sun salutations. There is no wilderness or park in Japan that has held as many moments of my life as Discovery Park.
If I miss my home country, I don’t have to go far. I can walk up the hill on 24th Avenue West from my 1950s home on a clear day for a view of Mount Rainier, which reminds me a bit of Mount Fuji. I can drive up Raye a few blocks to see the Japanese-style garden flourishing in front of my friend’s property. Met Market carries my favorite Kewpie brand mayonnaise and the S&B curry powder that I used back home. If I don’t want to cook, I can stroll into Yume Sushi or Mura, where the servers know me by my first name. And every early spring, when the cherry blossoms flaunt their reddish-pink magnificence, I think of my mother. I think of the last few quiet weeks of her life, when the cherry trees were just beginning to show small buds. One of the last few entries in her journal was: “I’m going to turn the corner when the cherry blossoms come.” She was hoping to make a recovery, but she eventually knew she wouldn’t. In early March of 2002, during my second to last visit with her at the hospital, she asked if I had any makeup with me. I said I did. She then said, “Will you put some lipstick on me? And a little color on my cheeks?” I pulled out whatever lipstick I had and applied a little to her lips and cheeks, and I told her she looked beautiful. She deteriorated soon after and died about a week later.
I grew up in a neighborhood in Tokyo called Yoga, but it was in Magnolia that I found my yoga and spiritual home. When I started taking yoga classes in the Village in 2004, I never imagined that it would lead me where I am today in more ways than one. After working as a teacher, and briefly as a manager, for fifteen years at The Yoga Studio in Magnolia under Brooke Zwerner and Lee Atwell, I took over the business with Ginger Griffis, a yoga teacher and craniosacral therapist, in 2022. We renamed the studio Magnolia Yoga & Healing Arts, envisioning a community and safe sanctuary where people can heal, learn, and grow through the quiet but powerful force of yoga and other healing modalities. With society more fractured and many of us disconnected from our higher or deeper selves, our mission feels even more important to us.
Ultimately, what Ginger and I want to create for Magnolia is what I want for myself. And this neighborhood has given me the space and quiet I need to work on myself. As I begin to envision what lies ahead for me, I can’t quite make out what it is, but it’s no longer skyscrapers and city lights. It looks more like a vast open space, and I’m totally fine with it.
Yuko Enomoto has been a Magnolia resident since 2002. She was born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in Tokyo. Before she became a yoga teacher in Seattle, Yuko spent many years as a reporter—first covering the arts and entertainment scene for an English-language daily in Japan, then as a Tokyo correspondent for a financial wire service. In her free time, Yuko loves listening to music, reading, hanging out with her family, learning random facts, and checking out new places to eat.