Other than an eighth grade trip to Washington, the first time I really spent any significant time in DC was the summer of 1990 when I had an internship at WJLA. One day early that summer I was walking out of the TV station and I was hit by a smell that I had never smelled before. It was very strong and very distinctive, and I was very intrigued. There is a big park at Connecticut and Tilden where I was walking, with lots of bushes and trees, and I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. I didn’t love the smell, but I liked it and I was taken with it. I was walking with my friend Tige, and I asked him if he smelled it and he said he thought he did, but he didn’t seem to take much notice of it.
Every day for a few weeks I noticed that smell, but I never figured out what it was. It was a fun summer for me – working at a TV station and living in a big city - and I think that smell probably contributed to a sense of wonder and a feeling that I was somewhere new and exciting.
I moved back here for good in the spring of 1994 and have basically spent my entire adult life in this area. Every summer I have noticed that smell, and every year when I smell it for the first time it stops me in my tracks and think to myself that I really have to identify it before I leave. And I have always been thinking about leaving. I’ve lived all over this area and I notice it in different pockets. I have spent a long time standing on the bridge on Connecticut Ave where it crosses Rock Creek Park looking down at the trees below where the smell was particularly strong. And driving around Northern Virginia I will often notice it during that short stretch around early June when it appears to be in bloom.
I finally found the tree when I moved to Dupont – there is one at the corner of 15th and P a block from my condo. A few years ago I snipped a clipping from it and brought it home, but didn’t know what to do with it. This year when I quit my job our plan all along was to seriously consider moving or traveling while the kids are little and it will be less disruptive to them. So when I smelled it again – this was the first week of June and I was standing outside the Crate and Barrel in Alexandria where I had gone to buy Danielle a replacement for one of her favorite glasses that I accidentally broke - I became obsessed.
I went back there with scissors and a camera, but couldn’t find it. So I drove back to 15th and P and snapped off a small branch from the one there, took it and home and photographed it. 
I then dove into some futile late night web surfing and learned a lot quickly about how to identify trees but kept hitting dead ends. My parents were visiting and my mom suggested I contact a family friend who knows a lot about plants. I emailed her the photo and within two days she had identified it: a Chinese Chestnut.
I googled around and read descriptions of it and looked up pictures and that is definitely it. So now I feel kind of like Inigo Montoya at the end of Princess Bride after he kills the six-fingered man, when he is asked what he is going to do next. He shrugs and says I’ve been in the revenge business so long, I don’t know what to do now. I am leaving DC with no clear mission, but with a burden lifted and looking for new challenges.
Keeping a blog of my final months here has been an interesting experience. I haven’t thought too much about an audience or who is reading it, but think of it as a journal – primarily for me and for Joseph to read down the road about the fun things we did when I took a little time off from work. But when we decided to move to France, I became sensitive to the fact the people do read this, and we hadn’t yet told everybody about our move. Most importanly, Danielle hadn’t yet told everyone at work – so I decided to hold off on the blogging. That – and we’ve been extra-busy with Rachel and with packing.
Our to-do list is pages long – US and French passports and visas, birth certificates and livret de famille, shipping things freight to France, donating a garage-full of furniture to charity, packing a house-full of furniture for storage, dealing with the cars, insurance, address changes, final doctors’ appointments, condo managment, sorting and organizing files and computers, and so on. And we’re trying to have fun with Joseph and Rachel, get out every day, and see friends and family as much as possible before leaving.
I kept a log of everything I did with Joseph this year, and I certainly don’t have any regrets about not getting to anything before leaving. We hit a few dozen monuments, parks, museums, and forts. And that doesn’t include the playgrounds.
I do find myself thinking about what I’d like to do when we come back to visit. This would be my ideal one-day agenda:
- Walk by my first apartment in Rosslyn, let the kids run around Iwo Jima Memorial, enjoy the views of DC. Maybe grab lunch at Petite Cafe and eat outside.
- Head to the Mall for a quick hit at some of the highlights: the Building Zone at the Building Museum, the Newseum, maybe the Sculpture Gardens, Jefferson Memorial and the Tidal Basin.
- Go to Dupont and walk through the old neighborhood. If we can unload the kids, dinner at Sushi Taro – where we went the night we got engaged – and then walk up 14th St. and stop in a bar or two, especially the Black Cat - scene of our sort-of first date.
A second day would have to include Del Ray and Lebanese Taverna.
I’ve been gearing up mentally to leave all year, and I am excited and ready to go. It seems that we keep having the conversation with friends about our decision being bold, or risky, or intimidating. But I really feel that the alternative would have been riskier – this is the perfect opportunity to do something exciting and different, and if we don’t take it now it might be a long time before we have another good window.
Travelling with kids will be tiring, but we’re fortunate that they are both very good natured. I’d say Joseph was a 6.5 on the easy baby scale, and as Danielle says Rachel is making him look bad. She is at least a 9. 
She is not yet two months old and she is almost sleeping through the night, napping well during the day, feeding well, packing on the pounds, smiling, looking alert, cooing. We had a brief rough stretch about a month ago that I think we tied to dairy in Danielle’s diet, and once we got past that things have been relatively easy. We’ve had a couple nights recently when she slept from 9pm-ish to around 6 or so – it isn’t consistent yet but we can see the light at the end of the sleep deprivation tunnel.
Joseph isn’t nearly as disturbed by the moving turmoil as one would expect. His dresser and chair were hauled away by movers taking stuff to charity, leaving him with an almost empty room. Our dining room table is gone. Some of his favorite toys and stuffed animals that he sleeps with have mysteriously disappeared as boxes stack up in the basement. But he has barely missed a beat – he has gotten really into drawing and coloring, still obsessed with trucks and planes and trains, and talking more than ever. Pretty soon he’ll have the longest plane ride of his life, and a whole new language to master.
I wrote most of this blog post last week, but I have been having some major computer problems. Our two main desktops are now in my parents’ basement – I did a 24-hour trip to upstate New York to drop off some valuables with them that we didn’t want in a storage facility. My other laptop is on a boat going to France. The one we’re left with is a brand new laptop that was supposed to be the workhorse in the arsenal, but we’re having huge problems with it. So blogging will continue to be a little slow for the immediate future.
Friends and family are suddenly realizing that they don’t have much time to see us and our calendar is filling up. Sonya and Malcolm are hosting a party for the Newseum crowd right before we leave (this graphic is Libby’s responsibility from the Evite.) I’ve had some final farewells – drinks with some of the gang from work, and Robert, Elena, and Alex stopping by today before heading out of town. Matt is flying in next weekend, and Patrice and Zachary after that. So that’s all great, but leaves us feeling a little melancholy about soon not seeing our friends as often as we like. Fortunately quite a few sound very serious about visiting us in Paris.
