This Is How It Always Is: Part I: Mapping Summary & Analysis

Rosie has a headache looking at the map on the table. It is late, and she knows she should go to bed, but she hasn’t been sleeping well lately. Staring down at the map of the United States, she thinks about Penn. He says that Madison, Wisconsin, is perfect. Bad stuff can happen anywhere, he argues. But Rosie knows they can’t stay in Madison. She wants to get as far away as possible from people like Chad. Camry suggested Phoenix, and she even sent local newspaper clippings about the city’s gay pride festival and a trans boy who was nominated homecoming king at the high school, but Rosie is not sold on that idea, either. 

Rosie considers the coasts, where differences are celebrated instead of scorned, but she knows her boys need more space and less concrete. She decides that Seattle is the perfect place for their needs. Seattle is so tolerant, Rosie thinks, that heterosexual people feel strange holding hands. There is plenty of open space for the boys, and there are lots of hospitals. There is also a house that is big enough for them, if she manages to get the job she wants and if the farmhouse sells for a decent price. 

The house in Seattle has a turret with a pink bedroom and the school has a skateboarding club, so Poppy is excited to go. Rigel and Orion are looking forward to learning about the Puget Sound, and Ben knows that Seattle is a good city for a kid who knows computers and skipped the sixth grade. Penn, too, agrees to go. He sees leaving not as giving up, but as moving on, something that is brave and perhaps even necessary. Roo, however, isn’t happy. He is first-chair flute and quarterback on the pee-wee football team. He has friends and a life, and he doesn’t want to leave.

Roo tells Rosie that it isn’t fair he has to give up his life and move away just because of Poppy. Rosie agrees. It isn’t fair, she says, but he has to do it. That is what being a family means. “I hate family,” he says. Family means that, too, she says. Rosie’s new job pays to ship all their things to Seattle, including their cars and dog, so they get to fly. Rosie is almost disappointed. The car ride would have been “cathartic,” and Rosie thinks that an important move like this should have a grand sendoff. As they fly into Seattle, they fly low over Mount Rainer, and Rosie can see the snow-covered peaks perfectly.