As you can probably guess, I shared one this weekend.
This past Sunday I headed down to DC to pay my respects to President Ford (you guys know me and politics). Now, anyone who's been to the Capitol lately knows that since 9/11, there's no direct access to the building. You've got to go up a walkway on the right hand side (if you're facing The Mall), pass through security (seriously, why can't I ever get the hot Marine to feel me up?), and then slip into a side entrance. On extremely rare occasions you get to go around to the front door, and that's precisely what we did on Sunday.
I breezed through security (but someone still owes me a dinner!) and had made it to that part of the balcony where, when you look straight up, all you can see is the Dome. Kind of like this:
Now, let's face it, it's a pretty dome; it's an impressive dome; but, after almost an entire lifetime of visiting said dome and seeing it from The Mall, I'm sad to say that I've become used to it.
The woman behind me (roughly my mother's age which, if I hope to stay in the will, I will report as 35) however, had an entirely different point of view. She started gasping and shaking and looking up at the dome like a little girl.
"Oh, oh, OH," she exclaimed, prompting me to think that I had wandered into the diner scene in When Harry Met Sally.
I smiled at her, "It's beautiful isn't it. First time in DC?"
"Yes," she breathed. "We did it right, we did it right." She kept repeating herself while her friend -- clearly a DC suburbanite -- looked somewhat embarrassed.
"It's beautiful," I agreed, "But wait until you get inside."
While bummer-friend started relating the history of how this beautiful building was almost wiped out on 9/11, I wandered into the front steps. At first, I couldn't believe that you could reach a certain age (still 35 if my mother's reading this) without seeing Washington, DC. Then I realized that what I really was was jealous. I had grown up seeing The Dome, the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, the Cherry Blossoms, and all the other DC sights that are supposed to invoke patriotism and pride, and now they were just buildings and trees to me. This woman, this 35 year old woman was seeing them for the first time at an age where they could really mean something and when she would never forget the feelings they invoked.
She made me think, and as I left the Capitol and headed down the steps towards The Mall, I paused for a moment to look up at the dome once more with new eyes. And while it wasn't quite the eyes of the "lady on the Capitol Dome," or the eyes of the woman seeing it for the first time, it wasn't through "eyes on the ground either."*
* Just in case anyone doesn't have a clue what I meant by that, here's the speech from Jimmy Stewart's Jefferson Smith...
Just get up off the ground, that's all I ask. Get up there with that lady that's up on top of this Capitol dome, that lady that stands for liberty. Take a look at this country through her eyes if you really want to see something. And you won't just see scenery; you'll see the whole parade of what Man's carved out for himself, after centuries of fighting. Fighting for something better than just jungle law, fighting so's he can stand on his own two feet, free and decent, like he was created, no matter what his race, color, or creed. That's what you'd see. There's no place out there for graft, or greed, or lies, or compromise with human liberties. And, uh, if that's what the grownups have done with this world that was given to them, then we'd better get those boys' camps started fast and see what the kids can do. And it's not too late, because this country is bigger than the Taylors, or you, or me, or anything else. Great principles don't get lost once they come to light. They're right here; you just have to see them again!
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