Hindsight: Images reveal greater meaning as time passes

Published 6:46 pm Wednesday, November 26, 2008

I hadn’t set out to find Grandview; I was lost. It was three years ago in August when I first stumbled across the north Everett neighborhood. I had just moved to the Northwest from the Midwest to start an internship with The Herald, and I was exploring.

The neighborhood — I learned later it was normally saturated with playing children — was nearly silent. An early morning rain had trapped most of them indoors. The silence made it easier for me to hear the faint sound of a basketball thumping the ground somewhere between the tightly packed homes.

Following the heartbeatlike repetition, I came across Esra Alameedi, then 10, criss-crossing puddles under a pillowy layer of clouds, wasting time before her summer school class.