Missing

While it's been more than a year that The Frontier has begun to feel like home, I still have occassional periods where I miss Virginia - the DC area in particular - deeply. Fall is one of those times.

I miss the Association of University Women's annual used booksale at the McLean community center. I miss the National Book Fair. I miss the storybook fall weather and landscapes - The Frontier is much too dry to produce much in the way of spectacular fall colors. I miss the Taste of Bethesda festival - one of my first introductions to what became a long list of "my favorite things" when I first attended 12 years ago. I miss the mass (and usually misguided) hysteria-disguised-as-loyalty regarding the Redskins. Here people root for Denver or San Diego or, sometimes, Seattle - trying to adopt a home team loyalty for teams that play hundreds of miles away.

Most of all, I miss loving fall without having to dread the onset of winter. Winters in the Mid-Atlantic are often a breath of gratitude for relief from the onslaught of soggy, sordid, steamy August weather. Conversely, winters in The Frontier are exactly the weather people attempt to avoid (at least those who give little regard for The Frontier's "Greatest Snow on Earth.") The coming of winter looms over every piece of fall, casting long shadows as the days fade from brilliant sunshine to dull, slate gray skies.

The Frontier has slowly become home - at least for now - and I'm okay with that. But once in awhile - during the golden days of September and October - I miss the East Coast falls that I once anticipated with great excitement.

Moon Walks and Vampires

On Moon Walks
20 years ago today, I made my first trek to the National Air & Space Museum in downtown D.C. I was spending the summer at my aunt and uncle's house in Virginia, and was mid-way through indulging myself in what would ultimately end up being a life-changing experience.

We had made several trips downtown in previous weeks - the first being for the not-to-be-missed 4th of July celebration on the National Mall - but we hadn't yet ventured to the Smithsonian museums on the mall's south side.

I certainly didn't recognize the significance of the day until my arrival (with hundreds of thousands of other people) at the air and space museum that day - the 20th anniversary of man's first walk on the moon. I touched a moon rock, gazed at real and replicated space craft and learned more about space in a few hours of reading every museum sign I could lay my eyes on than I had in all my nearly 11 years of life up to that point. It was, after all, only 3 short years after the Challenger disaster, my last real interaction with space, which had left me a bit skeptical and slightly bruised.

I remember feeling kind of important for being in a place so significant on the anniversary of such a great historical event. It was, ultimately, one of the things that gave D.C. such an incredible pull over my psyche. Standing in the middle of history was intoxicating - so intoxicating that it never quite left me, until I migrated back as an adult resident.

It's hard to believe 20 years - and so much more history - has passed. Today, as I listen to the recaps of the 40th celebration of man's walk on the moon, I can't help but reflect that for me, the lunar landing happened not on July 20, 1969, but on July 20, 1989, as I had the chance to re-live a piece of history in a city known for staging some of the most significant historical, political and social acts of the 20the 20th century.

That day, D.C. became my town.

On Vampires.
It surprises me, looking back, that the thing that terrified me most about my first surgery (at age 14) was not the surgery itself, or even the anesthetic (something I learned to fear with the next surgery, which left me in critical care on life support). Rather, my greatest fear was having my blood drawn and typed the week before surgery. It wasn't the needle so much as it was the fact that I had to sit and watch vials upon vials (or so it felt) of my blood leak out of my arm.

Today, as I journeyed to the hospital lab for my fourth blood draw in 12 days, I realized just how grateful I was that I go over the whole thing a long time ago. As it turns out, if one ends up with a blood clot while pregnant, one ends up spending a significant amount of time getting to know vampires phlebotomists on a first-name basis. I have one more draw this week until the doctors determine if I am medicated at the correct level. Then I get to repeat the whole process in 10 days when I begin another drug that may or may not interact with the first one, requiring another two weeks of vampire lab visits every three days.

The whole experience has taught me something though - if you have to go in for frequent lab work, go to a hospital. Himself confessed that hospital vampires phlebotomists generally have more experience overall (not to mention much more experience with difficult veins or people like me who now artificially bleed like a stuck pig upon the slightest abrasion) and are more skilled with a needle. I don't want to risk jeopardizing the streak yet, but so far, 5 sticks with needles (counting the one where I got stuck and didn't bleed - odd) and not a single, solitary bruise. A significant event, given the fact that this medication makes me bruise spontaneously.

It still doesn't make me terribly fond of vampires blood draws, but at least it makes it tolerable. Plus, they give Woodstock a dum dum sucker if she happens to be with me, which makes her find my lab visits downright thrilling. And anything that makes a toddler happy, makes a toddler's mother very happy.

One Decade Ago

Ten years ago tonight, Himself and I first met.

We met at a Murder Mystery dinner. The first two things I found out about him were that he disliked bread and Italian food (we were having spaghetti and garlic bread - the first and last time the two of us ever ate that meal together).

I remember the first thing that came to my mind, "We have NOTHING in common." I was pretty quick to dismiss him as a result (in truth, I was pretty quick to dismiss ANY guy at that point in my life - I did not want to get married, and the surest way to that was to not go out with the same guy more than a couple of times). As it turns out, he was friends with my best friend's boyfriend (who then became fiance, husband and ex-husband - all before Himself and I were ever married), so it wasn't as easy to dismiss him as I thought it would be. And, as it turns out, we had far more in common than I thought.

He was excellent at the Murder Mystery game, and I was intrigued by how different he was from everyone else. We ended up talking for quite awhile after the event. In fact, talking(ironically, given Himself's hermit-like personality) was the hallmark of our early relationship. In fact, my roommates, at the end of my tenure at Warren Hall, gave me an award for being the "Most Likely to be Found Outside at 3 a.m. Deep in Conversation." Let's just say I didn't exactly get a lot of sleep that spring.

It's hard to believe it has been 10 years. Ten years ago, I was on a year-long break from college, trying to decide what to do next - working full-time in educational programming for the national 4-H organization and serving as the resident advisor to Warren Hall - a co-ed house for 24 college-aged youth. Himself was living the barracks at the Navy Hospital, working as a corpsman in the Navy and a vampire at one of the local hospitals.

In the 10 years since, Himself has moved four times, I have moved six times and we've moved collectively four times. We've worked for 16 companies between us, lived in three different states, a total of 10 cities and one aircraft carrier. We've been married six years, had a Siamese cat (Rameses), one child and will welcome a second one this year. We've driven tens of thousands of miles to pick up or drop off Grover and have driven the stretches of I-95 and Route 13 between VA and DE hundreds of times in that pursuit.

We have made and moved away from dozens of close friends ... which probably explains our reticence to work to find any new ones. We have written thousands of e-mails, used up hours on the phone and road-tripped to all sorts of cool places. We have laughed, loved, cried, fought, mourned and celebrated - and eaten our way through more amazing food than either of us probably should have.

More than that, in ten years we have grown. Given the adventures (good and bad) of the last 10 years, I'm looking forward to what the next 10 years holds for us.

I love you, Himself.

We Will Never Forget

This morning, I walked out to the car to go to work. There were flags lining the street (it is a church service project - the flags are put out on federal holidays).

I stopped. And thought. And wondered what federal holiday I had missed and panicked about what to do with Woodstock (Miss Jan is closed on federal holidays).

And then I remembered.

"We Will Never Forget" - banners, signs, people, ads, music, artists shouted.

Except, seven years later, for a small moment, I had.

I was in Baltimore on 9/11/01. I knew people in NYC, at The Pentagon and people who lost family members and close friends. Just 12 months before I had been living across the street from The Pentagon. I picked up the phone and called my mom at work. The secretary asked who was calling. I said, "Her daughter in Virginia." The secretary made a little, shocked "oh" noise and paged Mom immediately. I longed to be somewhere safe - which, at the moment, was not standing on the twentysomethingth floor of a hotel next to one of the nation's busiest harbors across from another World Trade Center.

I came home to Navy fighter jets flying loaded, to a strangely silent, barren horizon as you looked over to the Naval Base from the HRBT. Not one ship stood at the pier.

I had nightmares for months. For five weeks I spent weekdays at my barren, quiet apartment and weekends with a friend. I couldn't stand being alone. I spent my lunch hours that week with colleagues at prayer services at the Baptist church across the street.

Himself and I passed e-mails back and forth through a Military censor - once a day. For that, I was extraordinarily fortunate. Others headed to the Gulf were not so lucky.

I stood and looked into the crater of Ground Zero and watched the neighboring buildings fall and rise over the course of 5 1/2 years on various trips to Manhattan. I watched the Pentagon rebuild as slightly paler bricks replaced the flag hanging over the burning crater in the wall. I watched as the new memorial began construction. Noted the subtle changes in life, in attitude, in fervor.

Each subsequent year, I observed the moment of silence for the Twin Towers and The Pentagon and Flight 93. I attended memorial services or contemplated where we were versus where we are. Time passed. I got used to carrying a small wallet, empty pockets and no liquids - to save time going through security at any place that seemed remotely significant.

Then, I moved to The Frontier and life changed so significantly, the little reminders were no longer there. I didn't drive by The Pentagon several days a week. There were no more random road trips or business trips to NYC. The only security I encountered was in the airport - which now just seems annoying rather than an invasion of a peace we took for granted.

And then, last year I brought Woodstock home from the hospital on 9/11. I watched the memorial service on TV as I nursed her, but my tears were for the pain in my body, the frustration with not being able to figure out how to feed one's starving infant rather than for the loss of life, of innocence of national security.

It was that thought that returned to me this morning in the shower - the memory of bringing Woodstock home for the first time, rather than the memory of loss.

We Will Never Forget - but we will slowly replace the sensations, the memories, the horror.

And I'm not sure how I feel about that.

The Misfits

(Those of you dying to see Baby Girl, click here for a post which required I use pictures to be able to adequately explain my venture into mobile baby territory).

I met Jane when I was a senior in college. She, a year older (and, she would add "wiser," to which I will concede in areas of somehow knowing the title and author of ever book she's ever read, where to find all of the Sonics on I-95 and how to keep Boris, her now-deceased ancient heap o' metal running for years beyond his prime), was a freshman.

I was a PR major - a transfer from another college with a bad case of senioritis, fresh off my year of "living large" in the DC area and not quite willing to settle down in Happy Valley. She was a twentysomething Freshman with several years of business experience under her belt.

We both lived with relatives in The Tree Streets, a few blocks apart. We met at church, seemingly the only two people who weren't raised in Happy Valley nor were living at home. We were, for lack of better terminology, The Misfits.

We went to the 50-cent movies on Tuesday nights and watched every ridiculous teen movie made that year (It was the year that inspired the parody Not Another Teen Movie). We found every semi-decent restaurant in Happy Valley (which, at the time, was a list that had fewer options than fingers to count them on). When she moved into the Cat Lady's basement, I mourned the fate of having one's house smell like feline urine. When she went to visit her family in California, she introduced me to Trader Joe's - and all its goodness - chocolate cookies, tortellini and a sparkling fruit beverage I haven't had in nearly a decade. I dragged her home one weekend to experience the true Great Outdoors in the southern part of the state.

I graduated and fled East. She, needing a major that didn't involve calculus, chose mine. We compared notes. She came to visit my beach-side home (Beach-side as in "apartment near the beach" not "home ON the beach") and was the recipient of my infamous "DC in less than 24 hours" tour, including a wild drive-by of the White House.

Several years later, she called "Know of a place to live? I'm moving to DC." I called Himself who said, "We have a second master suite we can't afford." And we became roommates in an odd set of circumstances.

Together we've explored shared passions for road trips, free tickets to anything that might be remotely labeled "cultured", used book sales, the McLean Community Flea Market, Bilbo Baggins, breakfast at Eastern Market, Sonic Strawberry Limeades, Restaurant Week, Law & Order anything, Project Runway, and finding obscure things to do in DC - like the White House garden tour.

Jane learned that Himself and I would work for food - and we greedily ate up her offers to pay us in Chipotle, Bilbo Baggins and Thai takeout to clean her bathroom, detail her car, help her replace Boris (aforementioned heap o' metal) and more. She and Himself delighted in teasing me about things about which I had no idea (usually involving things I really did not end up wanting to know. She endeared herself to Son for life - aiding and abetting his love for all things McDonalds.

I left her double-stuffed Chocolate oreos alone (except while pregnant) and she remained apathetic about my shrimp obsession, leaving more of our individual loves for both of us.

She loves the One True Grocery at least as much as I do, and frequently now rubs it in that she lives very near it, while I live thousands of miles away.

We talked business strategy and swapped managerial horror stories (we shared not only the same degree from the same university, but a shared dabbling in real estate at one point) and collectively drove Himself up the wall. In turn, Himself loved Jane for mellowing me out, satisfying my need to feel cultured (Himself would rather stick needles in his eyes than attend a symphony) and for keeping me from whining about not having any friends (which I now do with alarming regularity).

Jane makes excellent stuffed tomatoes and salsa bread and can cook a full turkey in no time at all. She can recite (nearly from memory) anything written in The Washington Post on any given day and can navigate Georgetown with her eyes shut. "Mileage" has no meaning to her, happily driving Boris' replacement on a whim to visit Mickey Mouse, the Statue of Liberty (twice), Savannah's lush gardens and historical sites, the beaches of North Carolina and dozens of other places up and down the Eastern seaboard. If you had gas money, Jane had transportation.

Even through all of our adventures - we remained The Misfits. Passionately opinionated, ridiculously perfectionist in all things business - we were short and tall, single and married, broke and more broke, the nearly youngest of 9 and the oldest of 4, a night owl and a morning person, a devoted fan of sci-fi and a fan of biographies/nonfiction narratives. One of those friends who hold at least a few embarrassing stories as aces up her sleeve.

Today, Jane is officially OLD.

Happy Birthday! I miss you.

Ode to Connecticut (the Avenue)

Did you know the state song of Connecticut is Yankee Doodle? Does it really matter? Not so much.

Connecticut is a fine state (somewhere there is a photo of me at the Connecticut welcome center, just outside Danbury across from NY - on our honeymoon, that photo was taken to commemorate my first foray into the great state of Connecticut and New England itself. Himself still teases me about it - especially since I was wearing my Farmer John overalls, which he loathes).

But Connecticut, while a fine state, isn't the Connecticut I love most. My favorite street in DC is Connecticut Ave. I have many fond memories schlepping up and down Connecticut Ave. in a tour bus or school bus or other such vehicle when I worked as a youth tour guide in DC. I have some not-quite-as-fond memories about the street, from the times when I was commuting via train from Maryland to DC, there was a fire in the tunnel, and I walked several miles UP Connecticut Ave. from Dupont Circle to Brandywine, approaching the MD border. In the humidity of late June.

My trip to DC this past week took me to a hotel just off Connecticut, where the convention was held. To illustrate my nerdiness about DC, as I was carpooling in with a friend, I was crazy-excited about cutting through Georgetown to get to upper Connecticut Ave. because it brought back so many memories. Having lived with me for several years, she was gracious enough to realize it was truly heartfelt emotion rather than hormonal insanity and thankfully let it pass without too much mocking. On my last day at the convention, I set out to wander along Connecticut Ave. in the warm afternoon sun, after I completed my work.

I love Connecticut Ave. It is one of the most vibrant streets in the city, entering DC at Chevy Chase circle among large, expensive homes, small shops and tiny strip malls. It meanders south, passing the University of the District of Columbia, the Uptown Theater (where movies premiering in DC actually premier - and the only theater in the city with a working balcony), the strip mall across from the Uptown theater, which had the first off-street parking in DC - back when off-street parking was considered a developmental accomplishment instead of sprawl. Along the way it passes the zoo, the Taft Memorial Bridge, the fine homes and embassies south of Rock Creek Park, the shops and cafes of Dupont Circle, and the business district as Connecticut meets K street - home to DCs power brokers - lobbyists, lawyers and consulting firms.

My walk took me to the National Zoo. Having not paid homage to the baby (though not so little) panda in a very long time, I wandered into the zoo, drifted among families with strollers and small children and couples linked arm-in-arm using the zoo their own lovers' lane. I remembered all the times we brought Son to the zoo when he was little - back when I was the cool girlfriend instead of the wicked step-mother, back when he loved to ride the train so much, we'd sometimes ride it back and forth across the river - or up to the zoo - just for fun. I found myself anxiously awaiting the day when Baby Girl would be excited to go to the zoo - and longed to bring her to the places that are seared in my memory for a thousand different reasons.

For a moment, none of the stress of life existed - no bills to pay, no unemployment woes, no one needing me just then, no need to think about the future, or the time or what was on the perpetual to do list.

I basked in the sun, took in the scents of the handful of Indian, Lebanese and Mediterranean cafes, embraced the fact that not one person sharing the sidewalk with me was just like me and, for the first time in months, felt as if, even if only for a moment, that I belonged.

It's a good thing I got a dose of reality in the form of horrid Saturday-night traffic, or I might have missed my plane back to the real world.

So if you are in Virginia, you MUST read this

I am coming to Virginia.

Beloved homeland (okay, not really, but possibly - and it's not the frontier).

I am coming TOMORROW as in 25 hours from now I will be landing.

I am FREAKING OUT. FREAKING OUT. FREAKING OUT.

I booked my ticket 30 minutes ago. I opened my big fat mouth, made a recommendation to a client, and *poof* just like that I'm leaving on a jetplane.

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHH.

On one hand, I'm excited - it's Virginia, there isn't as much snow there. I get to see at least one friend.

On about 12 other hands, I'm panicked, terrified, and anxious.

Do I leave Baby Girl here? Do I take her with me? If I do, whatever am I going to do with her for the time I'm working at a convention? But I'm not coming home until the end of the weekend. Four days is a long time to be gone. I'm panicked at the thought of leaving her and panicked at the though of bringing her. I don't know how to fly with a baby. Good grief, the amount of stuff she required for a DRIVE four states away was enough to confine us to a small travel suitcase, because she and her entourage of stuff took up the entire car.

I don't have life insurance. I've never not had life insurance. Why this even bothers me, I have no idea.
I don't have ANY clean clothes. As in I'm wearing the last pair of clean dress pants I have right now.

I HATE FLYING. As in deathly afraid of flying. I usually have MONTHS or at least WEEKS to panic. I have - um - 16 hours.

Someone tell me that this is a good thing.
And those of you in VA - I might have time for a quick hello. And! I could return Oliver & Kristin's handy-dandy rubbermaid container they lent us the morning we left for The Frontier (if I'm not so panicked that I forget to pack it).

AAARRGGGGHHH.

Wait, I already said that.

Let Me Count the Ways ...

Since I moved west, I often get the question, "What do you miss the most about the East Coast?"

For months and months and months, I've answered, "Almost everything - traffic and cost of living the exceptions."

Today, I finally realized what it is I miss the most (besides my friends, the smorgasboard of food options and the "One True Grocery."): Diversity and tolerance.

And, while we're at it, I also miss decent public transit.

A Tale of Two Snowstorms

The last time I had to deal with measurable snowfall was on Valentine's Day. At the time, I was a world away from where I am now - figuratively and geographically. Our parents had just received the card in the mail, informing them of their new grandchild-to-be. I hadn't yet been laid off. There was nothing to suspect the status quo would change.

I walked out to my car to discover the two feet of snow pushed up against it by the apartment complex's snow plow, valiantly spend the next hour trying to make a path out of the mound so I could go to work. I was freezing. I didn't have a shovel. I wasn't in the mood to deal with snow in the wilds of DC. So I gave up, made hot cocoa and told work I was going to work from home.

Yesterday, as I was heading downtown for a meeting, it started snowing. Big, white, soggy, wet flakes. By the time I left, it had already made a noticeable impact on the landscape - creating slushy roads and cautious, slow-moving traffic. I caught myself thinking, "If I was still in Virginia, my office would be closed and I wouldn't have to work."

I went to bed last night, lulled into slumber by the voice of the weather man talking about lake effect snow and an increased prediction of how much would stick. I woke up to a silent, winter wonderland of white. I bundled Baby Girl into her newly acquired Santa outfit (because it's very, very warm and ridiculously cute), grabbed my laptop bag, my pumping bag, the mini cooler for her milk, Baby Girl in her carseat and my water bottle (I later remembered I had left my lunch sitting on the kitchen counter - heaven only knows how I managed to forget one more thing ...). I schlepped it all upstairs, opened the door, and realized that, since we no longer live in an apartment complex, there is no one to shovel the walks for us. No matter. I trudged through the snow, buckled Baby Girl in, started the car to keep her warm and surveyed the landscape.

Determining that there was not enough snow to actually warrant shoveling, and risking a very icy return after the stuff had melted and refrozen, I cleaned off the car windows and began my journey. As I drove, I again drew a parallel to my last snowstorm. While the majority of the snow on my route had fallen in the middle of the night, the roads were nothing more than wet. Clearly they had been treated and plowed. I thought, "If I was in Virginia, the roads would be awful, the office would be on a delay and half the people would call in because they couldn't actually drive in the stuff."

But I wasn't, and The Frontier is quite adept at dealing with the snow. The drivers, while probably not any less goofy about driving in it, at least have generally lived here long enough not to panic at the first sight of a snowflake. The schools stay open, the businesses stay open, the world keeps on moving. Whiteouts, power failure, blizzards - nothing stops this place from trudging on. I think it's all those pioneer stock, who feel the need to push on through anything.

No more will I sit, with childlike energy, willing the weatherman to predict a snowstorm - because no more will the mere mention of a snowstorm mean partial days, working from home or complete closures.

Instead, Himself and I will rummage through the shed to find the salt and the snow shovel. Winter has arrived.

Favorite Restaurants

Himself and I were talking this weekend a lot about DC - as mentioned before, I was homesick, and he was suffering a myriad of emotions over who was and wasn't coming to the weekend's celebration.

Since my mind was on food all weekend - what to buy, what to fix and serve for Baby Girl's blessing luncheon, and since Heidi and Dave spent their anniversary in DC revisiting favorite restaurants (and texting me about it), I thought a lot about MY favorite restaurants in DC.

In no particular order:

Bilbo Baggins, Alexandria: I discovered this when training interns while I was working in Maryland. We were going to take them to Gatsby's Tavern (a fabulous place for a colonial lunch), as was tradition, but it was closed for a wake. The maitre d' suggested we walk down Queen Street to the bright yellow townhouse that was home to Bilbo Baggins. I immediately fell in love. Himself discovered it a year or so later. We both declared to each other, "There is this great restaurant ...!" and then burst out laughing when we realized we had suggested the same one.

Tachibana, McLean: I love sushi. Love it so much I could eat it every single day of the week and not tire of it. While flying one Christmas from the right coast to the left coast to visit Himself's family, we read a review about the restaurant in an in-flight magazine. I tore the article out (yes, I know, bad plane etiquette) and saved it. When we moved back to the DC area, we tried it out. If you discount the mismatched 1970s decor, the food is amazing. The sushi is spectacular - large, succulent pieces of fish over tangy rice. And nowhere else makes spicy scallop rolls quite like Tachibana. In fact, the last truly sushi meal I had there (a sushi meal without raw fish isn't sushi), was the day before I found out about Baby Girl's pending arrival.

Pho 2000, Herndon: Comfort food extraordinare. There are dozens of Vietnamese soup houses in the metro area, but having tried at least half dozen of them, Pho 2000 takes the cake (or soup). They have the richest broth, the best chicken and the best additional menu items (like spicy chicken with bamboo and coconut in a clay pot). Plus, Himself and I could eat there for $17 - including appetizer, tax and tip - a bargain in DC. And it was right down the street from our house.

Taste of Saigon, Tysons Corner/Rockville: Introduced to this restaurant during my first sojourn in DC, it remained one of my favorites. Black pepper chicken, in all it's caramely, peppery goodness, remains one of my all-time favorite foods. Owned and operated by a Vietnamese family who emigrated to the US during the fall of Saigon, every meal tastes homemade. It's a good thing that by the time my office moved to the building next door, I was only there for another week - otherwise my paychecks would have begun subsidizing all the black pepper and gyoza goodness that was Taste of Saigon.

Hee Been, Annandale: (See a theme? Asian food as a general cuisine is my favorite - it surpassed even Italian years ago). Recommended by Tom Sietsma, the restaurant critic for The Washington Post and a VP with whom I worked, Himself and I tried Hee Been for the first time about seven months before we moved. It quickly became a favorite - especially when we could take advantage of their much less expensive lunch offerings. Savory bulgogi and kalbi, spicy kimchi and the best Korean mashed potatoes in town. Mmmmm. It was worth the horrendous drive to get there.

There are more. DC was the birthplace of my love affair with all things food. There is Cafe Deluxe and its wonderful fire roasted tomato soup; Sweetwater Tavern and its great rootbeer, mashed potatoes, fried dough and house salad with goat cheese; Vidalia and its salmon croquettes; Jaleo and its cod fritters and paella; Taste of Saigon and its chile lime rockfish (served with the head - not for the squeamish) and dozens more.

All that thinking about food makes me hungry. I guess chocolate milk isn't enough to count as breakfast.

Homesick

Can one be homesick for a place in which one has no family, no juvenile roots, no actual claim to roots at all, in fact?

If so, I am homesick.

It is ironic, really, that this week I have had an especially strong pining for all things (okay, most things - I certainly don't miss the traffic) DC. At this moment most of my immediate family are on their way to visit for the weekend. Tomorrow at this time, some of Himself's family will arrive. It is my first time as an adult hosting any sort of family function (try not to burst out laughing picturing a family reunion at the Hobbit Hole a la Bilbo Baggin's birthday party).

And yet ... I am homesick for my other home. While Utah might be my childhood and collegiate home, the Frontier itself is not either of those. Nor is it my home of adulthood. I have even fewer roots in The Frontier than I do in DC. Himself and I met when we were both living in the DC metro area. Most of our mutual friends are there. Most of our married life thus far was spent there. Our second family is there - a comical group of friends cobbled together by our mostly mutual expatriate status.

We will celebrate the birth of Baby Girl at her blessing in church this Sunday. We formally name her and bless her and celebrate the miracle of her life. I am beyond happy to be able to share the experience with our families (and a few friends who have also migrated to The Frontier). However, I have found myself longing this week for the family of sorts we left behind in Virginia. I feel as sad celebrating Baby Girl without them as I would without my immediate family.

I miss the variegated friendships, the deep relationships that formed in absence of any local family members. I miss my feeling of confidence and independence and passion about the area in which we lived. I miss the second mothers, best friends, close colleagues, food buddies and mentors I left behind.

The rising emotional significance of this weekend - the first meeting of my family and Himself's family, the celebration of Baby Girl, my first family hosting responsibilities - has paved the way for strong feelings of longing for my two worlds to collide - the world of my carefree, confident young adulthood and the world of my childhood, which is now the backdrop for my child's childhood.

I do not question the move. Clearly, we have been blessed beyond comprehension. I am continually reminded of all of the magnificent things that have happened since our arrival in The Frontier. Yet it does nothing to diminish the yearning I have for the relationships and memories I left behind five months ago. I wonder if the pioneers - the first permanent settlers in The Frontier - felt something akin to what is going through my heart and soul this week. A profound gratitude for their arrival in The Frontier and everything it meant, mixed with a nostalgia for what they had left behind.

I am homesick.

One October Sunday

Nine years ago this week, I met someone who radically altered the course of my life.

I was living in the Washington, DC, area and nearing the end of what was supposed to be a short-term internship. I met Shaliece on a Sunday. The Friday before, I had been offered a promotion and an extension - as the Resident Advisor and Lead Intern Coordinator. I loved DC, but wasn't sure I wanted to venture that far out of my comfort zone - staying for a year.

Shaliece and I attended the same church congregation for young adults. We met at an after-church potluck social that had some ridiculously comedic name. It was her first Sunday. I knew very few people, as I primarily let my Pilot-personality roommate (see here for more about the Pilot/Wingman personality theory) do the socializing for me. It so happened we were the only two people who didn't know anyone else (my roommate, for some reason, wasn't there), so we naturally gravitated to one another.

I went home that night and realized that I really wanted to stay, because I now had a friend that hadn't come courtesy of my roommate. That, combined with my lifelong fascination with all things DC, resulted in me accpeting the position and staying.

Every single thing that has happened in my life since the fall of 1998 resulted from that decision, made primarily because I found a friend in Shaliece and somehow knew the two of us would become inseparable.

Shaliece and I have gone through a lot together. Looking for, finding and losing love, divorce, betrayal, heartache, dark lonely days and days filled with sunshine and laughter. Wild adventures and middle-of-the-night talks. Job issues, moves, boyfriends, fiances, husbands, children. We adventured all over DC, went on road trips and became the laughing stock of the church volleyball team because we cared more about talking than playing. It seemed everything could be endured if the two of us tackled it together. Nothing seemed too outlandish. One particularly memorable trip found us in rurual western Virginia staying in the dorm room of two girls we'd never met. A trip to NYC landed us in a hotel I refused to describe to my parents until years later. She convinced me to buy a real wedding dress, dragging me to bridal stores galore while I was on a business trip to Maryland. She took our engagement photos. I flew to South Carolina for her baby shower - representing all the out-of-town friends who weren't able to make it. We window-shopped for antiques in Savannah, celebrated my birthday in Baltimore with s'mores and a sleepover the weekend before 9/11 and played an elaborate game of pretend in Manhattan. I have boxes of photos of one of our adventures or another.

She is one of the reasons Himself and I ended up together - and was half of the couple with whom we double dated the first six weeks Himself and I started hanging out. We never lived in the same place again after I left to return to school the following summer, but we continued to be close friends - stopping in whenever one of us would be in close proximity to the other.

We both know some of each other's darkest secrets - things not revealed to almost anyone else. We both knew each other at the most difficult points of our lives - and somehow managed to escape them to celebrate the happiest days of our lives that were waiting around the next bend.

Today I drove up the canyon to one of the ski resorts to visit Shaliece. She has been in town visiting relatives, and it presented the perfect opportunity for Baby G and I to adventure up to visit them. She oohed and awed over Baby G, while I marveled at her 6-month-old little boy and commented on how much her almost-3-year-old has grown up since I saw her last summer.

The hours slipped by until it was time for me to head for home. We talked children and life and pondered on how astounding it was that we'd known each other for nine years. I thought about it a lot on the drive home. I thought about how much our lives have changed from that weekend nine years ago when we met. Neither of us, at that point, could have possibily predicted where we would end up nearly a decade later - she the wife of a Naval officer and mother of two in the Pacific Northwest, me married to Himself and the new mother of an infant living in The Frontier.

It was a beautiful afternoon to spend with an old friend - very much like the crisp fall afternoon on which we met, neither of us knowing how completely our life course was about to be altered.

It was a happy moment to introduce Baby G to one of my dearest friends. I hope one day she is just as lucky.

This is My Town - in Books

When my mom was helping me unpack/move boxes in the Hobbit Hole awhile back, we tackled the bookcase in the den (which has since been moved and re-arranged). As she was digging into a box, she stumbled across my "random collection of ultra-boring books" (this according to Himself, not me), which included several autobiographies and biographies of well-known people. She looked at them as she put them on the shelf and commented on the number of democrats represented in my collection.

Honestly? I had never realized this. I LOVE to read. I can't think of anything I like to do more (including anything to do with food). I love biographies of fascinating people. I make LISTS of people about whom I want to read. I don't necessarily think about whether or not I agree with the person's philosophy, I choose them based on how fascinating they are to me. I like to read about people who made surprising contributions to the world or did something different or were influential during a particular period for whatever reason. Beyond that, I love to read non-fiction books on things about which I am passionate.

I looked at the books. What I saw was not a representation of political leanings/ideology, but a representation of DC - a compilation of so many of my passions. I realized that it might appear to an outsider that I am slightly obsessed with all things DC - architecturally, culturally, anthropologically - everything. I have a stack of DC-related coffee table books, which I often find myself thumbing through. I have Meg Whitman's book on her perspective of Washington (in which she comments so accurately that DC is the place to which over-achievers come to congregate and and find their place in the world - so true!), Katharine Graham's collection of essays on Washington Life, a collection of essays written by Marjorie Williams - a prominent Washington-based writer, autobiographies of Madeline Albright, George Stephanopolous, Sandra Day O'Connor, Katharine Graham and others.

Then there are the books which have Washington connections and reflect my life's passions (which do a pretty good job of explaining why I love DC so much): the Joseph Ellis biography of George Washington, A People's History of the United States, several books on journalism, by journalists and commentary on the media - all with some sort of Washington insight.

The fact that I want to read a biography on every President of the United States probably should be revealed, in interest of full disclosure on all obsessively DC things. I am dying for a particular book on the history of Washington and another detailing the architectural significance of some of its greatest buildings and monuments.

I love that city, the people, the culture, the flaws, the insanity, the precise nature of everything there, the symbolism, the history - everything (okay, everything but the traffic). It was the city of my coming-of-age, the city in and around which Himself and forged our relationship, the city that encompasses such a rich part of my life.

Maybe there is no "slight" obsession. It is probably no wonder there is a shrine to my beloved city in my bookcase.