Monday morning I made the drive from Silver Spring, Md. to Arlington, Va. to stay with my brother and sister for a few days. GPS and natives' advice recommended staying away from the city of Washington, DC, but that seemed rather annoying. After all, anybody who's ever been on the Beltway knows that it just ... absolutely stinks. And the district is just so pretty in the rain.
I lived in two places when I lived in the district. The first was a townhouse in Capitol Hill that I shared with about nine other people, and the second was a studio apartment on 16th Street near Howard University and Malcolm X Park. At the time it was right on the edge of a seedy part of town, but gentrification has made it a lot, well, brighter if not safer, and that apartment building happens to be a straight shot from Silver Spring. So I took the scenic route to Virginia.
And while I was driving, I meandered even more. I drove on Constitution Avenue past the Smithsonian and the Washington Monument. I braved Dupont Circle. I went past Blair House and the White House, and eventually ended up near the Kennedy Center and the Watergate Building before finally getting onto the 66 to Virginia.
I didn't really like DC when I lived here. I thought it was small and insular, a real company town where everyone went to Duke or U. Maryland and worked in politics, and if you didn't fit into those categories you couldn't meet anybody new.
But there was culture here. There was history and identity, and beauty. And that part hasn't changed.
And I just kept thinking, I am so lucky to have lived here.
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