Landmarks? What landmarks? (Another visit to our nation's capital)

My two children and I have traveled to Washington, D.C. together four or five times since my sister moved there with her family eight years ago. And each time, we have some variation of the same discussion. It starts with me, on an emphatically cheerful note: "What do you two want to do while we're in Washington? We could go to some of the museums, or the zoo, or climb the Washington Monument, or take one of those sightseeing tours by trolley....What do you think?"

And each time, the kids manage to strike just the right blend of receptivity and noncommital-ness to deceive me. "Sure, Mom, those all sound fun!" they say, almost as if rehearsed. "Can we decide when we get there?"

Deceptive is right, because we all know what's going to happen when we get there. The kids will start playing basketball with their cousins in the alley. Then they'll play wiffle ball in the backyard. At some point they might go inside to film a movie of their own scripting and direction. If it gets dark or chilly in the yard, they might decide to play Wii Fit in the basement for a while. If they get hungry, they might ask for a few dollars to walk several blocks to the candy store up the street.

Monuments? Museums? Sightseeing tours? Not usually. As I always lament, my sister might as well live in Peoria for all the time we spend exploring the treasures of our nation's capital when we make the trip south to visit. This week we managed an afternoon at the National Zoo, but that was because one cousin had a soccer practice and the other was committed to a birthday party, so we had a few hours to fill on our own.

But the truth is that I don't try very hard to change the course of our usual program. Sure, I know we could be making better use of our time from an educational or cultural standpoint. And yes, I admit I covet the idea of the kids going back to school and telling their teachers that they visited the Museum of Air and Space or the Holocaust Museum, or had an audience with a senator, or saw money being printed at the U.S. Mint.

Sort of. At the same time, there's never really enough time with the cousins, whom we see only two or three times a year, and I just can't muster the intentionality to tell the kids they need to stop playing in the yard so that we can go do something culturally and educationally important.

Because really, when you're 8 or 10 or 14 years old, what's more important than playing with cousins in the yard? Especially, as was the case with us this time, when it's been a long, cold, snowy winter at home and when you get to Washington it's 62 degrees with freshly budding leaves and bright green grass everywhere and you haven't really played outside, other than a few great days of sledding, in almost five months?

So every year, I manage to rationalize the fact that we go to Washington and come back with far more photos of playgrounds and impromptu theatrical productions than monuments and historical landmarks. But this year, by the time the trip was over, I was even less concerned than usual about the decisions we'd made. We drove home on Monday; halfway through the trip we received word first by text message and then on the radio of the tragic bombings in Boston. Stories of children losing their limbs or their lives make every parent stop to think about our own kids. And in this case, there was no question in my mind that if such awful things can happen to anyone, at any time, then we were probably making the best use of our time that we possibly could. 

Playing instead of sightseeing? Dancing in the basement instead of following a reenactment of how a bill becomes a law? It's a choice, and like so many choices parents make, I can't say for sure that it was the right one. But coming face-to-face this week with such a stark reminder of how horrifically everything can change in a moment, I think playing with cousins is as good a way for a kid to spend a week off from school as any.

Vacation ethos

It’s so easy to fall into the vacation trap and say “Why can’t it always be like this?”

Well, because if it were always like this, it wouldn’t be vacation, of course.

But still. There are so many aspects of yesterday that I wish we could keep as part of our regular non-vacation life rather than just having it be part of what’s special about vacation week. The unhurried morning, which left me plenty of time to do a four-mile run around Sarah’s DC neighborhood, drink a cup of coffee with my brother-in-law, and eat breakfast while watching Tim and Holly play in the yard. The fact that Tim and Holly were having so much fun together: taking turns pushing each other on the swing, climbing into the treehouse, Tim giving Holly a piggy back across the lawn. And just getting to spend the day sightseeing with the two of them.

Without making a big deal about it, I talked to Tim about our subway routing ahead of time and then stood back once we were on our way to see if he could navigate the journey himself. It’s been a year since we were last on the Washington Metro system, but Tim knew where to catch the escalator into the station and used the map on the wall there to figure out which direction we needed to go in and how many stops it would be. Once we reached the Smithsonian area, he helped me read the street map to figure out which direction to head in.

Later in the day, we met up with their cousins Hannah and Andrew, who are not on vacation this week. While Hannah played soccer, Tim, Holly, Andrew and some school friends of Andrew’s played a sideline soccer game of their own and explored the playground. And this was after we arrived at the subway stop where Sarah planned to pick us up and both the kids said they’d rather start walking in the direction Sarah would be coming from rather than just sit and wait.

Why can’t it be like this at home? I catch myself wondering. Why can’t the kids have so much fun together? Why can’t I be so unhurried? Why can’t Tim so easily take responsibility for age-appropriate tasks? Why can’t they spend hours and hours walking or playing in the sunshine, seemingly indefatigable given such beautiful weather and interesting surroundings?

Well, because this is vacation. And vacation isn’t the same as regular day-to-day life. Regular day-to-day life is actually pretty good for us too, but right now we’re away from home and having a lot of fun, and so it makes sense that everything seems a little more fun, a little easier, a little more fulfilling than it normally does.

That’s what vacation is all about, and that’s why I always look forward to it so much. It’s different from regular life. It’s special. It’s vacation.

Playing in someone else's yard

“Getting to play in someone else’s yard” is an appropriate metaphor for our trip to D.C. since the kids have spent more time playing with their cousins in the backyard than engaged in any other activity, but it’s also relevant in the figurative sense, since playing in someone else’s yard is exactly what it’s felt like to me to be here for four days.

Getting to play in someone else’s yard just means having a brief taste of what it’s like to live a different kind of life from the one you’ve chosen. Although staying at Sarah’s home in Washington isn’t as different from being at my own house in Carlisle as, say, staying in a yurt in Nepal or even an attic apartment in Paris would be, it gave me the chance to sample a different kind of life from what I live at home. On my morning run yesterday, I passed women pushing strollers while leading dogs on leashes and business people dressed in suits, briefcase in one hand and Starbucks cup in the other, and even a tennis court where an instructor was giving a lesson, as well as other runners of all ages. On my daily run at home, I pass trees, pastures, stone walls, a cemetery. It’s fun to have so much company while I’m out running. At home, I hole up in my home office working most weekdays, but when I need to go somewhere I climb into the car. Here, because it’s our vacation, we spent the day out visiting museums, and we got there by walking to the subway stop and then taking the subway downtown. Once in the city, we walked along bustling and crowded streets. The kids saw professionals, street people, college students, dog walkers, other tourists. It’s good for them and it’s good for me to be reminded of how much variety is out there.

My daily environment at home is one that many would envy and that I myself treasure, living on a farm in New England. There’s a lot of nature around us and a lot of solitude throughout our days. Here, instead of pastures I saw beautifully flowering cultivated bushes on the small city lawns in front of most of the houses. Unlike at home where the kids generally have to make plans if they want a friend to come over and play, here they’ve witnessed how playdates in a more populous environment work: whoever has the best swinging/climbing structure in their yard, which in this case is my niece and nephew, plays host by default whoever drops by: kids of all sizes, with and without parents, some who stay for ten minutes and some for two hours.

In the classic fable, we’d be analogous to the country mouse who visits her urban cousin and ends up happier with home, but in real life it’s not that cut and dried. I like being in the midst of humanity here. I like seeing other mothers and other runners every time I leave the house on foot. I also like our fields and forests. The subway takes some getting used to, but I like for the kids to see how manageable and useful public transportation is (and how if you get befuddled by the exit-fare system, as I have, there’s usually someone around to help). When a street person approached us chanting a semi-intelligible prayer, I was happy for my kids to experience that as well.

Getting to play in someone else’s yard is as valuable metaphorically is it is fun in the literal context. We’ll be home in a few hours, back to our country life, which we love. But we’ll remember all we saw and did here, and we’ll look forward to coming back.

The Lincoln Memorial versus basketball on the porch

Having close family members who live in cool places is wonderful. My younger sister Sarah lives in Washington, D.C., and I was delighted to have the opportunity to take the kids to see her family this school vacation week. When family members live in a tourist mecca, you never feel too much like you’re imposing as houseguests because there are always things you want to go off and do that don’t rely on their participation or oversight. And, of course, you get to do all kinds of great sightseeing while coming home to a family dinner at night.

But having family members who live in a city where there’s so much to do can also present a bit of a paradox, because with the Smithsonian Museums, the Mall and all the presidential monuments just an easy subway ride away, my kids are equally if not more interested in playing basketball in the yard with their cousins. There have been a couple of times in the past when the kids were really little and we traveled all the way to D.C. and barely did any capital-S sightseeing at all, just enjoyed each other’s company. This time, with the kids now 7 and 11, I felt sure they were at just the right age for a lot of touring, and so far we’ve done some, but I still think their favorite parts of the trip so far are things we could do in the proverbial Peoria, or anywhere cousins lived: played in the yard, gone out for pizza, watched a silly kid-oriented DVD.

This doesn’t come as too big a surprise. When I asked my seven-year-old which museums in Washington were of most interest to her, she replied, “Anywhere we can do our own art projects.” I said that wasn’t really what the museums in Washington were intended for. “That’s okay; Hannah and I can use her art supplies to make stuff,” Holly said cheerfully. I felt a little bit as though I’d been tricked into that one, but I’m glad Holly is just as happy to be drawing pictures with her cousin at the kitchen table as touring the Capitol.

We did make our way to the National Zoo yesterday and saw some exotic animals: leopards, zebras, elephants, chimpanzees, and a quick glimpse – the first one we’ve ever had – of a giant panda as he emerged very briefly from a shady shelter. Tim’s favorite part of that visit? Well, he’s an eleven-year-old boy, you can probably guess. In his words, “Seeing an orangutan smell his own feet and then go pee while hanging from a wall.”

We’ll try to fit in some more cultural attractions before we head home. Or we’ll just play some more basketball in the yard. Either way, the kids will remember it as a great vacation. And maybe they’ll remember to try to catch a glimpse of a monument or two on our way to the train station as we leave.