It was a year ago today that I visited DC during spring break.The cherry blossoms were at their peak, and I admired again how beautiful this city is. I never imagined I would live here.
The first time I ever visited DC was ten years ago, the summer before senior year of high school ,when I convinced my parents to take me on a college tour up the East Coast. This was before I’d ever ridden a train or tried hummus or knew I’d be leaving Mississippi. It was the first time I’d been above the Mason Dixon, the same trip I saw Brown for the first time (where I never thought I’d get to go), and Boston and New York (where I also never imagined I’d live) and Philadelphia. We stopped for a few hours in DC on the way back south. We parked somewhere alongside The Mall then walked around the monuments for just long enough that our car was towed onto a median and left with a nice parking ticket. It doesn’t seem like it could have possible been ten years since then.
The next time I visited DC was spring break of sophomore year in college when my best friend and I road tripped south and spent a couple of nights with his family here. His uncle took us on a driving tour around the monuments and Rock Creek Park. We walked around the Tidal Basin to see the cherry blossoms, went to the National Gallery, then got lost trying to find the Metro. I did not know of a DC that wasn’t the monuments, Smithsonian museums, and politics. Sophomore year felt too early to think about graduation or worry about jobs, but DC wasn’t what either of us imagined when we considered it. (He ended up here for a while 3 and 1/2 years before I unsuspectingly stumbled in.)
The forecasters didn’t think the cherry blossoms would survive our snowfall last week, but they’ve pulled through, as always. It’s the 4th cherry blossom season I’ve seen. This time it feels different.
I get Indian food on the weekends, or Ethiopian if I’m downtown. I follow the Twitter account that tells me where the outdoor movies will screen all summer long. I ride a bike to Georgetown every weekend that it’s warm enough. I can parallel park if I have to. DC isn’t the place I imagined it to be, in that I didn’t know it could feel like a version of home. (Okay, technically my address is Maryland, but the mile to the District line never counted to me.)
I worried about living in DC after the election. But it’s weirdly comforting to be in a place where people are so passionate about social justice and equality and general goodness.
On Inauguration Day, I worried that the city would turn into a 1984-style dystopia. But it seemed instead like most people ignored it. We got the day off from work because so many roads were closed, and other than a sign telling me that there was restricted traffic on Wisconsin Ave, I saw no sign of it. I grocery shopped and avoided the news and watched Netflix on my couch. It was a surreal and not terrible day.
The next day was the Women’s March. My journalist friend/former roommate was in town covering the inauguration, so we went together, and it was the moment I was proudest to call this place home. I’ve never seen so many people. I’ve never seen a group so uplifting, so passionate, so bold, so happy to be together. There’s nothing I can say about the march that doesn’t sound cliche, but every word is true. My feet hurt, and I nearly got crushed once, and we stood stuck in the crowd not moving for nearly an hour due to complete grid lock, and I regret not one second.
On social media later, I saw acquaintances and politicians from home ridicule the “Pro-Abortion March,” and I felt so, so sad for how completely they were able to (and eager to) miss the entire point.
There were protests every day for a while. I went to one supporting education, one protesting the immigration ban, and a vigil for free speech. My dad started calling me The Protestor. As in, “The Protestor is coming home to visit soon!” But it never felt like some decision to embrace social activism all of a sudden—it felt like sitting home and doing nothing wasn’t an option. One of my proudest moments of life was when my mom, sister, brother-in-law, sister’s friend, and my dad (a life-long Republican) each called the Mississippi senator to oppose Betsy DeVos for Education Secretary. My dad called me afterward to let me know he’d called two offices when he couldn’t get through to the first one. I wanted to weep.
In February, I went to New York for a literary agent’s mixer at Columbia. I was supposedly there for networking, but I mostly wanted to see my friends. I told one of my favorite professors as much and she said, “I know, it’s like a camp reunion,” before grasping me by the elbow and introducing me to some agent who I was too intimidated to look up for days. My friends were better promoters of my work than I was, and I thank them for rescuing me.
The next day, I took a 28 hour train ride to Mississippi to meet my niece. Lily cried when she met me because she was so overwhelmed with emotion and excitement at my presence. She got past it and we became fast friends. I even overcame my fear of holding her, although not my fear of picking her up. Lily likes ceiling fans, snacking, naps, and when her Auntie Kay reads her the book about the sloth and the one about the greyhound and the groundhog. She tries so hard to talk, but as she’s 8 weeks old, it hasn’t quite happened yet. Soon, though.
The sun doesn’t set until 7:30 now, and everyone has come out of hibernation. Restaurants have reopened their outdoor patios. The tourists have arrived by the hundred to catch a 5-day glimpse of this city. It feels good that I get to stick around this time.
