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All of the American Cities are young. Washington DC has all the insight of a precocious teenager to the Old Cities of Europe.
But that doesn't stop the Pacific Cities from expanding.
Growing.
Learning.
Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland, the Pacific Northwest Cities, hear the drums, but their drums' timbre beats with the sound of stretched animal skin.
They remember the tribes that once hunted and fished their shores before explorers came and built roads and tore down trees and built buildings and removed the tribes from their ancient lands (they couldn't leave, thus revealing their City status in the process) and paved roads and built taller buildings and turned places that only heard the sound of wildlife, Salish, and Chinook into the cities they saw in their dreams.
The years that separate their "official" births don't matter much - what's the span of thirty-five years when Athens still speaks to her people after millenia, but that doesn't stop Portland, the eldest of the three, from being a type of older sister to her siblings.
She can't help that her city was the goal for so many settlers, which she accepted and nurtured. They came with their oxen and their axes and their plows and turned her valley and her city limits into the City of Roses. She mourns the loss of all the pristine nature, but is so pleased that her children do their best to balance progress and preservation, even if they call themselves "weird" in the process.
She's even sent letters to Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, because their vision of Portland makes her beam with pride.
Portland wouldn't say that Seattle suffers from Middle Child Syndrome, but he can certainly act out when he wants to. She sent him a copy of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities as a joke once, not because of the way his children treat each other, but because she can tell he and his children try so hard to be in two times at once - one foot in the past and one foot in the future.
Seattle would say he wants to experience it all, from the descendants of the First Nations rediscovering their heritage, to watching the Mariners lose yet another game at Safeco, to sharing a PBR with the crowds on Capitol Hill, to even dressing up in a tux to take in a concert at Benaroya Hall.
It's a source of pride for him that his citizens see him as accessible. He's always willing to answer questions (within reason, his dreams are off limits to humans), discuss music, art, and philosophy, lead discussions in coffee shops or university lecture halls.
Basically share himself with anyone who asks, because what is a city without it's Cities' knowledge? No City wants to become another Alexandria, no matter how young or inexperienced they may be.
So he gives and gives, and his children give back with their dedication and their ever expounding creativity and curiosity.
His open arms are their open arms.
Both Portland and Seattle consider Vancouver family as much as they can (both of them, even if Portland has nearly absorbed her American namesake across the Columbia, state lines be damned). Her early settlers came more through the boundaries of their sibling San Francisco, chasing her newly discovered gold, than through Portland and the Oregon Trail, but she does set herself apart from them.
Her story is different than theirs. Hers is a story of expansion, of opportunity, of "new money".
But there are things they share.
Both Vancouver and Seattle share scars of their own distinct city-wide fires. Vancouver and Portland both love their entertainment centers and feel a small thrill go down their spines when they're able to provide for productions which Los Angeles has refused.
All three of them love the water that shares their boundaries.
All three of them love sports.
(Seattle is always first in line whenever there are talks about bringing back the Sonics franchise.)
(Because then perhaps Portland will stop taunting him because she finally has something he doesn't.)
All three of them love their children desperately and will carry them on their shoulders through the good times (Expo '62 and the Space Needle, the Vancouver Olympics, Powell's City of Books) and the bad times (the WTO riots, the Stanley Cup riots, any climber lost to the snows on Mount Hood).
But through it all they hear the drums of the past calling them.
Reminding them.
Portland has no reason to tease her younger brother. All three of them straddle two times: the ancient and the modern.
The native and the settler.
The First Nations displaced to make room for skyscrapers.
Try as they might, it calls to them.
It's something they share.