Had a great conversation with an old roommate tonight. He’s taking a work trip to Washington, DC, where my wife and I lived for 9 years. The conversation got me feeling all nostalgic.
Initially, I went there to help my parents furnish an apartment for my mother since she was awarded a science fellowship for a year. One afternoon that week I went to Capitol Hill with a stack of resumes in hand. It turned into fool’s luck when I got hired on the spot for a paid internship with an Alabama congressman. Two weeks later I was living on an air mattress on Mom’s apartment floor.
A month after that I met my wife in a parking garage.
A week later for our first date I gave her a tour of the US Capitol building.
Five years after that (I had some growing up to do) we got engaged on top of the capitol dome. We smuggled in a case of champagne that day.
I worked for the world’s largest aerospace company. I got an MBA. My wife and I learned to love art. We learned to scuba dive. We ran marathons. I became a Freemason.
Ernest Hemingway wrote a book about his experiences in Paris during the 1920’s, which he entitled “A Moveable Feast”. In the book, one passage has always stood out to me; “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” Washington, DC was our moveable feast.
And yet, I sit here and read this and look down at the baby monitor with my two sleeping boys with a full heart tonight. For I know I am right where I need to be.
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