A Weekend in Washington, DC

April 2022 ... 

This blog was supposed to be all about travel and the lessons that it teaches us. Or me, rather. I have fallen by the wayside with that goal, in the past few years, because of one thing or another that has delayed trips and made them smaller, closer, and less frequent. 

But trips have happened and I need to catch up. Maybe the blogs I am about to post are not as thorough and long as others in the past, but I hope they will serve as inspiration for you all to pack and hit the road, if you can and if some of these places are handy, or as a reminder for me that the past year or so has not been completely empty of adventure. 

This one is about a trip to Washington, DC that we took on Easter weekend (around April 17th, 2022). It was also the weekend of our 12th anniversary. 

We have both been to the American capital several times before. But every time you go, the city offers the same familiarity and comfort of a small city, really, and it’s fresh with a new vibe. Whether it’s a new presidency at the White House, or just a different season, the city feels old and new and fresh at the same time. 

Although it feels much like a historic, cozy Southern town at times, it has the same thump as a big metropolis (think New York and the likes) - busy traffic and ambulance and police sirens.  It even smells like a big town, human urine and throw-up included. 

We didn’t want to drive during our stay there. We booked a hotel just about 5 blocks off from the National Mall and we wanted to walk everywhere - to the Capitol, to museums, to restaurants. 

The highlights of this trip included: 

A walk-about The Capitol building - still surrounded by scaffolding and awaiting renovation after the January 6th, 2021 insurrection. It was a sad, daunting sight - a dark spot in our recent history to be sure.  “Not in America”, some said. Yes, in America, the facts beg to differ. 

The US Capitol building

The reflecting pool was emptied out of water and it added to the gloomy vibe. Although the National Mall was resounding with music and crowds (Easter weekend is not a slow weekend for DC, we found out), it felt gutted and unfriendly. 

A walk in the US Botanic Gardens right off The Mall was relaxing and refreshing, a spot of peace away from the exhausting party-like life of crowds beyond: the famous Washington cherry blossoms were on their way out that weekend, but some still around,  and flanked by dogwoods and rising proud over blankets of multi-colored tulips. 

The US Botanic Gardens

The highlight of the trip was probably the visit to The Museum of the Bible - a new one to us and I don’t think it’s an old one for the city either. What better place to be around Easter?! (We realized quite fast that other ten thousand other Christians had the very same thought that day!)

It is a very well-done museum, following the history of the Bible through many traditions and across cultures from all over the world. It houses what seems to be hundreds of thousands of Bible versions in that many languages and dialects - some languages that you had never heard of before. It’s a museum of the printing press, and of languages as much as it is a museum of this one book and the faiths that it sprung into the world. 

At that time, it also housed a replica of the Shroud of Turin - a length of linen cloth bearing the negative image of a man and believed to be the fabric in which Jesus was wrapped after the crucifixion. Much research has been done to estimate its age. All of the research points to a time around the Middle Ages, maybe around as early as 1200s. But why people place it as belonging to someone roughly 1200 years before that date was unclear to me. However, reading about the effect it has had on so many generations, and reading about its history and how it was passed on from generation to generation, a sacred symbol of faith and hope is still remarkable. 

The Shroud of Turin

For our anniversary dinner, we went to The Dubliner which was right around the  corner from our hotel. We were supposed to be in Ireland (among other places in a tour) for our 10th anniversary, but Covid got in the way in 2020. So The Dubliner was an appropriate “consolation prize” two years after the “real” trip would have happened. The Dubliner was remarkable for two reasons, for me: they had the best home-made salmon pastrami Reuben sandwich I have ever had! I didn’t even know that salmon pastrami existed. And they carried my favorite beer in the whole world on draft - the Kilkenny cream ale. If you only knew how hard it is to get this beer on draft (or at all, really) in America, you’d understand what a momentous occasion this was. 

Salmon pastrami reuben sandwich and mashed potatoes at The Dubliner

We started our first day in DC by paying our respects to a new (to us) (small) memorial erected in honor of victims of communism. Although small and off-the-beaten-path, it bore an enormous amount of significance for me. It’s one of those memorials that makes my heart stop and skip a few beats when I think of all the faces that fell for nothing more than a belief. Puts things, still, into great perspective today, and it’s still a raw and alive part of who I am. Of who I will always be. 

The Memorial of Victims of Communism. Click the picture to view more from this trip.

About Spring, Birthday and Easter

“It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want—oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” (Mark Twain)

You noticed right. I posted nothing in April. My favorite month, my month, “the cruelest month” that it is, I had no inspiration. Not totally true – I just stopped breathing there for a while, in awe of this life, and this world around me. And I had to be quiet for a bit to take all the awesomeness in.

Anne Lamott says at one point that “in Easter — and Passover too — something that happens is that we stop. This is the 'dark night of the soul' stuff that John the Divine writes about; that in that stopping we may fall into an abyss that we have been trying to outrun since we were little children. (…) But in Lent, if you are a person of committed spiritual growth, you do stop.”

So, that's what I did, I suppose – just stopped and observed the big world around me with care, and keen eyes. It might be the last time I did – who would know?! We're not giving precise expiration dates.

This April, was the first time in as long a time as I can remember that I really was happy about my birthday. Ever since I was in elementary school, for whatever reason, my birthday was sad to me: another year, vanished and not half of the things I planned to do are checked off the list. So disappointing! Time running out, never returning to me. The mouse in the wheel running out of steam. But this year, the world looks different to me, from the other edge of the precipice that I just hopped over in February.

Like an old poet once said, my “doors of perception were cleansed” and the “world appears now to me as it is – infinite”, and most of all vibrant. I might speak in platitudes here, but there is something humbling about your heart literally being stopped for a bit. To come out of that and still see the light of day is character changing and direction altering. How can it not be?!

As much as I previously hated my birthday, I have always loved spring, and Easter is my favorite holiday. They usually all fall around the same time. I just love sitting still and listening to the life coming back in the spring. The light this time of the year is the light of Easter to me – given to us secretly in the dark church, at midnight, like a big mystery that only we are chosen and fortunate enough to partake into. I love spring because it allows me to enjoy that light, of hope and renewal and “another chance”-ness with every day, unlike the light of Easter, on Resurrection night, for one hour at church.

This year, I enjoyed spring slowly, with every flower, every bloom that showed up in my yard. It's amazing how much time you have when one is not working. I relived, again, every year of my life, with every sunny hour and every tulip that popped open. Since facing death a few months ago, my senses are sharper, and my attention is keener than ever before. I realize more acutely that the end is in every breath. Or could be. Therefore, I am that much grateful when I outlive it. The leaves look sharper green, the sun is warmer and brighter, the music is sweeter and every breath is a blessing. Every touch from my loved ones is uplifting and gracious. I am so unspeakably and undeservingly lucky!

Spring has always been a happy awakening for me, a welcome gift of re-opening my heart to the world once again and trying once more to do it right. For the first time, this year, I associated my birthday with that sentiment, as well. Took 41 years, but I am grateful I finally got it. I hope it forever stays this way – such a gift to be able to awaken my soul as the world awakens its own!

Instead of brooding over the year past and what I did not get to accomplish, I now cherish the simple fact that I made it over another threshold. I cherish people around me, and the fact that they are on this side of the dirt with me. Strawberries taste sweeter this spring, and the wind in my wrinkled and wintry cold skin is a gentle kiss.

Rumi asked “What is this heart? It is not human, and it is not imaginary. I call it you.” Just like the Alchemist, I finally found the treasure – it's always been here, it's always been inside me. This year, I got to meet it. Full circle. Now, I am home.

*Note: Orthodox Easter vigil started April 30^th this year. Easter Sunday was May 1^st. 

 

 "April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land"

 

 

Shades and colors of my garden, in April.

 

The Light. At Easter.  

 

"The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough" 

When Home Comes to You. On Easter.

It’s not often when I get to spend Easter (my absolute favorite holiday!) with my folks. It’s even more rare to spend two Easters in a row with them. I was lucky enough to go back home for Easter last year, and I am doubly so to have my parents here with me this year. I have been counting blessings for the past month and I won’t be done for a while.

The kitchen island and dad at the beginning of the day

Along with all the heartache of having them here, all sorts of arguments about why food does not taste the same in America, and why we don’t have “ienibahar” at the store for lamb steak, and why spices or beer for that matter are so God-awful expensive here, and why we don’t have beer in a coke-like machine at the end of the driveway, like they do in Romania, comes the priceless privilege of having home cooked meals, the way God intended them to be cooked – with love. And it’s the only way my folks know how to touch food!

Mom and dad arguing over ... who remembers ?!?

I make onion stew and meatloaf and cheese dip myself, year round, but I swear I am missing the “secret ingredient” they always have and never share to make the food taste just the way it tastes back home. I am not sure what it is, maybe it’s the fact that I am not working for it, maybe it’s the fact that they have no qualms about using the pepper and salt shaker, or using the real kind of butter … I am not quite sure. But although the recipes are the same, the outcome is always better when they do it.

Meatloaf: before and after. Yum!

And then, there is the bonding. We shop together, we cook together, talking, and sharing tips, and yelling across the room at each other when I realize dad uses real bacon in something and he realizes I am using “Smart Balance” instead of butter, cleaning together – it’s not just cooking, it’s living, and loving, and sharing, and a whole experience.

Dad, dubious that Fero can have any input whatsoever
on how many eggs go in the cheesecake pie

At the end of the day, and at the end of a long week of Lent fasting, we go to church at midnight, and when we hear the “Jesus has risen!” salute from the priest, our eyes tear. And we feel that much closer: we have lived through another important holiday – together. We have been fortunate, to unite once again although so many thousands of miles separate us on our daily lives. We see The Light of Jesus, and we thank Him for all that is He has given us: health, money, love, and each other. We feel happy. The sort of happiness in the purest form – the one of acknowledging that things that truly matter are small and don’t involve millions of dollars, nor houses at the beach, nor winning the lottery – they are small, but – just like the foundation of a house – they are paramount, because we cannot accomplish the big things without.

We bring The Light home, to every room, in the form of our vigil candles of Jesus’s Resurrection and we fall asleep happy, full and grateful.

After church, with The Light, back home. Grateful.

At the end of the day, I am not sure what I should thank God for: that He helped them travel here? Or that He helped me have a nice welcome for them? Or both …It’s a magic moment in time, out of which I will feed myself, like from the spring of eternal life, for years and years to come.

Happy Easter, all, and just like a friend of mine was saying this morning: remember that “it’s not all about the Easter bunny.” Not for us anyway.