Last week, we popped off summer break with a visit to Washington, D.C.

An emotionally complicated trip, to be sure. I’d been motivated for a few years to take the kids to Smithsonian to celebrate their Nerdish heritage. From ages 12 to 14, I lived in Maryland, and had great (but almost dreamlike in their single image flashes) memories of my dad taking me to the museums on weekends, the fantastic amazement of legit Wonders of the World, available free of charge – as many as you could take in before your legs gave out from exhaustion. I wanted my kids to have that, too.

For example, here are the actual bones of Lucy.

Here is some Leonardo Da Vinci art.

Here’s the SS-20 “Pioneer” ballistic missile from the former Soviet Union.

More recently, I’d been struggling with the push/pull desperation of wanting the kids to understand how their government works, how they can use it to change the world to their liking, so perhaps they will not grow up feeling as helpless as I do about the way our government is behaving.

That was the draw, of course. The push being how gross it felt to walk through the White House, as if by being there, we endorsed the people inhabiting it. Hey, guess what? LINES WERE SHORT AS HELL. For example: we applied for early passes to go through the Capitol Building, but when we arrived, our tour was 3/4 filled and the attendant said if we wanted to come back after we’d had some lunch, they’d just put us on the next tour, no problem.

Over the first part of the week, I had a bit of anxiety about whether the kids/husband would die of boredom. I was doing that thing where I walk too fast and out in front of everyone, like I’m a tour guide. Or possibly I secretly believe I can see trouble coming from that vantage point.

Plus, I had this absurd anxiety fantasy we’d get to the White House and somehow run into an impromptu photo op for Trump on the tour, and being white people touring the White House and thus looking like the only category of fools who voted for him, they’d think we were good candidates and motion for us to come over and shake hands. And what would I do? Would I cave and plaster on a shit-eating-smile like so many other clearly uncomfortable photo ops I’ve seen with this president? I’d like to think not. But also, fear that if I refused,  our flight home would include full body cavity searches and our names on some permanent TSA blacklist or something.

How ridiculous and self-important the anxiety scenario is did not in any way deflect my preoccupation with what I’d do if it happened. ARE YOU A SHIT-EATING SMILER, ANNE, OR ARE YOU A BODY CAVITY SEARCH CAUSER? I probably devoted 90 minutes to this question, divided into infinite split second considerations. I still don’t have an answer. I mean, if it was just me, no problem. But what about my kids? Because holy shit, we’ve seen how our government treats kids these days, haven’t we?

We didn’t see Trump.

Although he did make an impromptu visit to the White House lawn for a Fox News interview the morning of our tour! Like destiny was fucking with me just a little, wanting me to know it could have happened, even though I’m still incredibly self-important to even entertain the idea our paths might’ve actually crossed.

OK, more about D.C. later perhaps. But this post is running long, and honestly, I’m getting a little bored. But before I go, I saw this baller self-portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, and it’s as if I’ve found my spirit guide for everything I want to be in the face of everything I am.

Let me be this bold for the rest of my days, forever and ever, amen.

DAD UPDATE

I called my dad for Father’s Day, but ended up mostly talking to my mother. Forty-five minutes into our conversation, she casually mentioned how she’d gotten tripped up on her dog’s leash, fallen, and had to go to the ER for a mild concussion three days prior.

Beyond my initial surprise, she and I seemed to share the impression such accidents are now just a symptom of her current life trajectory; what was once strong and sturdy will fall apart in increasing increments until one day it simply fails to get up again. After a lifetime of being bombarded with stories that wrap up satisfactorily/meaningfully at the end, it’s unnerving to realize the story of our lives will probably be that things merely unravel with no rhyme or reason.

Anyway, despite the concussion (or perhaps due to it? This is where a medical degree would be helpful, I guess,) Mom seemed in good spirits. I think she’s getting better sleep as my dad also sleeps more. She warned me before handing the phone over that Dad didn’t make much sense anymore. I kind of rolled my eyes, because it’s been years since Dad made sense.

But when he got on, I understood what she meant. I guess I’d thought word salad was the rock bottom of incomprehensibility, that my father could not make less sense than that. But when he speaks now, sometimes there are no actual English words. He still has the cadence of someone carrying on a conversation, but pieces of it sound like, “Doronable so theron furgs,” or other various non-words that are not like the slurring of real English, but almost like hearing someone through static.

Which made it very tricky to have empathetic responses, as there were minimal clues as to even basic content.

He started out sad, and did have a string of words about doctors and money, which I took to be his longstanding fear that he might be healed, if only he could find the right treatment. On the outset, it is always easy to disregard this rant, because it is illogical – there is no doctor or money that would solve this problem, and therefore no reasonable avenue to pursue. But it always eventually sinks in that this mournful diatribe is a symptom of my father’s unending hope; that even at this late date, he wants to believe if he puts his mind to it, might be some avenue of redemption for him.

He stayed on the phone for perhaps ten minutes, and eventually his spirits took a turn for the better. His words got clearer and he told me multiple times “You’re an asshole!”

Which, through context cues my Mom had given me earlier, I took to mean Dad was talking about Trump, and that he had said that to the TV. Each time Dad said it, he got increasingly gleeful, perhaps goaded by my laughter and cheering. He added, “They said I’m right!” which I imagine meant the television talking heads on CNN or whatever happened to agree at the moment of Dad’s heckling, and somehow Dad, in his need for affirmation, believed they were talking to him.

Sometimes, especially in the current political #metoo and feminist climate, when my dad is talking nonsense, and I am so easily able to supply encouraging and buoying remarks (“Oh yeah?” *laughter* “That’s great!” “Wait, tell me more about that,”) despite not understanding 90% of whatever is so important to him, I have to take a step back and wonder at my social training, that I can support and encourage this white man through a conversation he dominates that literally makes no sense. How all my dad’s social training perhaps led him to this place where he wouldn’t recognize that a conversation which does nothing more than blow sunshine up his skirt is not a real conversation at all, but the act of making him feel important.

But other times, it makes me think of this early reader homework assignment my oldest kid brought home from kindergarten. It was one of those where the same sentence is missing out of each page, and the kids write it over and over, together as a class, to learn English. This one was so basic:

Do we need food to live?
Do we need water to live?
Do we need shelter to live?

with the kids scrawling

Yes we do!

on the right hand side of each page.

Reading through it the first time, out loud with my daughter, part of me was struck with this wonder that kindergartners might not know these basic things. In this way, the book read almost like a warning. Hey kids, if you don’t have any water or food or a safe place to sleep, you might die. This is a basic tenant of your existence.

As a newish parent, it scared me, how fragile the child next to me was, chubby little legs swinging, holding a tiny survival guide in her hands.

On the last page, it said, Do we need love to live? And it struck me by such surprise, I started crying, reading that dumb pamphlet. Because it’s so easy to forget that as essential as food or water, we do need love to live.  This despite the fact it often seems like adulthood is all about teaching you how you don’t need love, that you can subsist wholly on your own stamina and inner sense of self-worth.

My mother also told me in that casual things-fall-apart tone of voice that Dad can no longer travel. It’s a two-pronged problem; he is now incontinent, and he gets agitated in the car. Only understanding that he does not want to be in the car anymore, he will try to open his door and leave. Even though the car is fully in motion.

It is amazing to me that his brain is so damaged he might inadvertently destroy himself, and yet he still seems to need love to live. Not even the basic love of someone locking the car door after he gets in, but the complicated love of listening to whatever he’s trying to communicate, of nodding and smiling and making him feel understood. What a strange thing that something so intangible remains, even when everything else is stripped away.