A DC Win-Win

I love when something is just a win in all directions. Recently, my friend Ann, who lives in DC, asked me if I would come housesit and look after her cats while she was on vacation. My family had been talking about renting an Air B&B for a few days of city exploration, so this was a perfect opportunity. Not only were there cats, which we always miss when we are away from home, but Ann also loves graphic novels, so my kids were thrilled with the reading options.

The kids and JC didn’t want to be there for the whole time, especially since it was the hottest week on record or something, so I was by myself with the cats for a couple days, and then with them for a couple days, and then with my mom for an evening. It was perfect.

I took myself to a couple of plays (Is God Is at Constellation Theatre, The Rover at Shakespeare Theatre Company, Wannabe at DC Fringe). When Mom was visiting, we saw an evening of stand-up. I went to the zoo at least three times, because it’s close to Ann’s. Petra and I were there very early one morning so she could sketch tigers and elephants before it got too hot, and we got to hear a tiger meow for his breakfast! It really did sound just like our cats, but deeper.

We ate so much good food, including the kids’ first experience of Ethiopian cuisine and a “conveyor belt sushi” restaurant.

We also visited the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, because they have an incredible manga collection (and a SLIDE in the library!).

…AND the Mt. Pleasant Library, because I’m obsessed with the WPA murals, and they have some beautiful ones in reading nooks in the children’s section. These are by Aurelius Battaglia, who later went on to work for Disney.

We visited two museums as a family, and they could not have been more different. Due to our recent engagement with several Holocaust-related plays, we felt like it was time to visit the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. I had never been to it before. We all found it deeply moving. It’s designed very well, with a combination of things to read and things to engage on a more visceral level.

Petra found the section about Hitler’s rise to power deeply troubling. I think she felt history rhyming a little too loudly in that part. Silas was fascinated by a room that had photographs of all the people who had lived in a shtetl in eastern Europe, hundreds of people, most of them murdered in the concentration camps. There was another section that had the walls and cobblestones from the ghetto where The Orphanage took place. He also found a list of Gentiles who had saved Jewish people, and on that list was the name of a person who was actually featured in The Orphanage. The connection between the play’s historical fiction and the real history was overwhelming. We were all grateful that we went, but it was a heavy experience.

The other museum we visited, Planet Word, which is pretty new, celebrates language. We had such a great time there, and it’s the kind of museum where I saw people of all ages enjoying and exploring. We were too engaged to take many pictures. My favorite section is a giant, Beauty-and-the-Beast style library (complete with a secret room behind a bookshelf!), where books come alive through the magic of projections. There’s also rhetoric karaoke, a light show about the origins of English, and more. We also did “Lexicon Lane,” a sort of escape-room bonus experience there. We picked one of the hardest cases, and nearly solved it…except that I made a mistake that put us off the trail. The puzzle was well-designed, and we enjoyed playing it.

When mom was visiting, she and I checked out the National Museum of Women in the Arts, which I think is new. They had a good variety of art, although more modern than otherwise. Being in a museum where the male gaze was entirely absent was a new experience, and an interesting one. I hope to go back and see how that space develops (and I hope they find ways to feature women in other art forms—right now it’s just visual arts).

All in all, we had a great week, seeing city things and playing with kitties. Even if it was 104 in the shade! We’d totally do this again (although DC is more fun when Ann is there)!