About four decades ago, when we were living in Boston we hopped in our old beat up car and drove south for many hours. At about 11 p.m. we drove into one of the most beautiful cities in the world at night…Washington D.C. I felt as though I had died and gone to Europe with one gorgeous granite building after another lit up against the night sky.
We were considering a move to the area after our two years in Boston. Dad/Rick was finishing his second year at HBS and I had taught music in a middle school for a year and then had gone home to our little student housing on the Charles River to give birth to Saren and to give private violin lessons. If someone would have told me as we drove into that city for the first time that we would not only live in McLean (a suburb of D.C.) for several years off and on but that somewhere in the future most of our children would return there for internships and work, I would have been filled with wonder and disbelief! After we left the area, Shawni and Dave worked there and then lived in our little house in McLean for five years with their first three little children. Saren, Saydi and Josh all worked there as single young adults. And most of our kids did Internships there with Senator Hatch when they were students. At present Eli and his wife Julie live there on Capitol Hill much to our delight, and are now sharing their city with us!
On Friday, Eli picked us up at the Baltimore Airport despite horrendous traffic and we grabbed Julie from their cute condo and went straight to our favorite Asian fusion restaurant Oya.
It was fabulous food but there was one small problem. One of the waiters tipped over Julie’s glass of water into her lap which she handled with perfect grace but her new Apple 4S phone which was in her lap was not so gracious. The light went on, started blinking and it wouldn’t start. The management quickly agreed to pay for a new phone if the Apple store doesn’t replace it. Eli has it carefully packed in rice but we’ve never had much luck with that (i.e. Noah fell out of the canoe at the lake with a phone in his pocket last summer and the rice was useless). Eli was not happy, but he recovered in time to enjoy his beautiful meal! We’ll have the verdict on the phone tomorrow.
It’s been a very light winter in DC which also means an early spring and we hit the jackpot on the cherry blossoms! The Tidal Basin was positively an enchanted fairy land! We were consumed with the beauty of it all!
Amazingly, just as we parked the car, a guy yelled, “Hey you took my parking place!” By the time we saw him, he had jumped out of the car to give us a big hug. It was Lorraine and Steve Swift! Dear friends who live here and who have kids who are our kids’ dear friends and whom we haven’t seen since they returned 15 months ago from their mission in Ukraine. Serendipity reigned! It was so fun to see them and catch up as we wandered down the basin enjoying the splendor together.
Is this a cute guy or what???
The sun was just setting…..
…..as we approached the monolithic Martin Luther King Monument! Wandering amongst the giant granite monoliths the famous Martin Luther King quotes lifted us out of the world into the realm of a giant of our age!
A plethora of enormous and profound quotes like this were etched in granite and gracefully curved around this extraordinary monument a half a block in each direction. The walk through the enchanting cherry blossoms, a gift from the Japanese government long before we arrived all those years ago and the ethereal lighted granite reminded me of that drive into the city and our first glimpse of this stellar city of monuments. Almost heaven!
1 comment:
If you pack it in rice, you need to leave it in there for at least a week. Even if that did work, though, you should just make the store pay for a new one, or if you have the AppleCare+ plan, the $50 bucks to replace it.
My son dropped his iPod touch in the toilet and we got it working (week in rice), but it still has a couple issues, so it's better to just get it replaced.
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