Just For You, Here’s A Love Song
April 28th, 2009 | Author: Jessica
Today I went with my seven year old (and his second grade class) to the Natural History Museum in D.C. We had a perfect day: dinosaurs, bugs, ice cream, climbing on the big rocks outside. There was a great forensic anthropology exhibit but he dragged me away from it. He loves me with an intensity and a calculated winsomeness that makes me think someday he is going to make a Freudian psychologist very, very rich.
I grew up walking to the Smithsonian museums on hot, aimless summer days. There was an exhibit on cultural body modifications in the dusty corners of Natural History that used to repel and fascinate us for hours.
When it snowed we used to go sledding on the Capitol grounds. We didn’t have sleds so we borrowed the neighbor’s trashcan lids to use as saucers. We hid from the Capitol Police in the bushes when they made their rounds. Anecdotally, they were more tolerant in the Carter years, more authoritarian in the Reagan years.
The spring break I was 16 we spent every night swimming in fountains. We would spend the night at Becky’s house. When her parents had gone to bed we would slip downstairs to the kitchen one by one and out the silently sliding back kitchen window. At the end of the alleyway we would meet the rest of our group (I could roll call, you know who you are).
Our spot was the fountains on the side plaza between the Capitol and Union Station. There is a long reflecting pool, stagnant and mossy, that we swam in fully clothed for hours. There is a fountain built into the wall facing that had stacked rocks we climbed on. The best fountain is on the higher level, an elaborate centerpiece with changing colored lights. We would lie on the grass to dry out and go home at 5 am, our clothes clinging to us. There was always a moment when I eased the kitchen window open, perched on the window ledge before climbing in, listening for movement in the house, that gave me the first (of many) tastes of illicit, adrenaline pumping thrill.
On the bus ride out, even New York Avenue in its grubby glory of used car lots and metal barricaded storefronts was beautiful to me today.
Love it. I know of what you speak.
delicious. Ah memories. I long to go back to my youth just for the thrill of illicit pleasures. Seem to be so few later in life (working on creating some, though)
Cathy - I know, I wish I had the photographic evidence.
Mothership - you are right and nostalgia can be it’s own trap. We need to work on creating that excitement here and now.
Your Artists Way group is a good start and a good idea.