Have a Safe Day

 "Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm." - John F. Kennedy

Have a safe day.  Those were the words spoken to us by our flight attendant as we exited our plane in Washington, DC on Friday.  I haven't heard that line before.  For my birthday this year, Merv gave me the gift of a weekend in either Boston or Washington.  I love Boston but I've been there several times already.  I had never been to Washington and have always wanted to go so it was an easy choice for me.

It is a beautiful city, yet a city of contradictions.  If I could choose a central theme for it, it would be war.  I have never been in a place that seems to define its history by war but that is how Washington seemed to me.  War memorials abound.  Most are beautiful, all are moving.  It was the Vietnam Memorial that made cry.  It's not the biggest of them, or the most beautiful, but it was the war that I watched each evening on the 6 o'clock news when I was growing up.  The names of all those lost are engraved on the wall of the memorial.  So many names.  I was a child in the 60s when the war was raging and a teenager in the 70s when it finally ended.  As a child, I didn't understand that the casualties reported on the evening newscasts meant that those men had died.  I didn't equate the word "casualty" to death.  How could something called casual be a death?  I remember how horrified I was when I finally understood.  The Korean Memorial is amazing.  It is on that memorial where I read the words "Freedom isn't free".    Too true. Which takes me to the biggest contradiction.

There is a lot of attention in Washington focused on freedom.  But it comes in two forms.  Freedom from oppression and tyranny in the world through war.  And freedom from oppression and tyranny within the country as a fight for civil rights.  There was a wonderful exhibit in the Smithsonian's American History Museum that took us through the Emancipation Proclamation which was enacted 150 years ago and then moved us into the civil rights movement 50 years ago.  Much had changed in 100 years but much had not.  And sadly, 50 years after Dr. Martin Luther King made his "I have a dream" speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial, things still aren't the way they should be.  While I saw many groups of all hues, few of them seemed to be of mixed hues.  All white or all black.  All Asian or all Middle Eastern.  Even in the restaurant we dined in on Saturday night, all the white guests were seated on one side of the restaurant and the black guests on the other.  It was just plain weird.

I also didn't see an acknowledgement anywhere that the tremendously beautiful buildings of Washington were built largely by slaves.  It was in Ford's Theatre at an exhibit honouring Abraham Lincoln that I came to understand the role that black soldiers played in the north's victory during the Civil War.  In a city of statues, few mark the history of people of colour and I didn't see a single one of a woman who existed in real life.  It is as if women and people of colour have no place in history in a city that marks its history through the commemoration of its wars.

There are some incredibly wonderful things about Washington.  For starters, it's scrupulously clean.  The trees and gardens are stunningly beautiful.  I saw some flowering trees in hues of pink I have never before seen in nature.  They took my breath away.  Most amazing of all, is that with few exceptions, entry to the attractions is free.  It didn't cost us anything to visit the three Smithsonian museums we got to, or to see the National Gallery, Ford's Theatre or to take in the view from the top of The Old Post Office.  We took in the Lincoln Memorial,  World War Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, Korean Memorial, Washington Memorial and Jefferson Memorial without spending a dime. We walked around the Capital Building and the White House, at least as close as we were allowed to get.  We walked down the mall and pictured the March on Washington.  It was thrilling.

As a bonus on this trip, I was able to arrange to meet a dear friend Renee for dinner on Friday night.  It had been about five years since I had seen her.  Renee is starting an inspiring new chapter in her life, moving to France for a time following the end of her more than 40 year marriage.  I am sad for both she and her husband that they couldn't make a go of it but inspired by the courage she is showing in reinventing her life.  She looks wonderful and I'm so happy I had the chance to see her before she goes.  I've always wanted to visit France so perhaps her move will finally be the impetus I need to make it happen.

My feet are sore today and I am tired.  We walked miles and miles in the ninety degree heat and yet there is so much we didn't see.  Washington - beautiful,complicated, contradictory.  I can hardly wait to go back.