We walk with the loose rock gravel crunching under our feet, the bugs making their east-coast noises, and the local red feathered birds trilling in ways that we’ve never heard before. We are at Mount Vernon. The home of the father of our nation, George Washington. We have a three o’clock appointment to walk through the mansion and have arrived early. We’ve been told that we can’t line up yet and are asked to look at other areas of the grounds. Perhaps we want to go to the garden? We head into the garden and discover that the building overlooking the flowers and foliage that buzzes with busy bugs is the old slave quarters. Charlie gets caught off guard. Why would such an important location not be blatantly identified? Why is it called “The Garden” and not “The Slave House” by the Mount Vernon guides?
At three o’clock, we line up to take the self-guided tour through the Washington mansion. The whole thing feels quick. In one room, out another. A slim sampling of the whole place. Not much of a sampling of who the Washingtons were as a people at all. There’s a lot of description of why Washington wanted some part of his house built a certain way, but WHO built it feels tertiary. WHO farmed his fields feels ignored. WHO made his whiskey feels skirted. Enslaved people are mentioned – even occasionally by name – but it all feels like an outline, not a story. Our walk-through tour isn’t the only tour offered by Mount Vernon. In fact, we know that they do offer a talk on the enslaved people who lived on the grounds – so I get it. Our tour is just the quick hits. Yet I think there is something left out even for our tour being what it was.
I love biographies. They are more important than fiction for my personal and professional growth – just by a hair. One of my favorites is “Washington: A Life” by Ron Chernow. Chernow goes to significant lengths to use Washington’s own correspondence to show his conflicting views on slavery. Chernow points out that Washington was motivated to keeping his slaves during his lifetime for selfish means. To keep up the lifestyle he felt he deserved. Yet Washington understood the immorality of it. In his will, Washington specified that his slaves should be freed. After his death, his wife Martha didn’t honor his request and only released one enslaved person. After about a year, Martha freed the rest of Washington’s slaves only due to a growing paranoia that they were out to kill her. But Martha herself owned over half of the slaves that were in bondage at Mount Vernon. And they were never freed.
I’ve had many dinner table discussions with my girls about this – mulling over the conflicts of interest of the founding forefathers – George Washington in particular. So how surprised were they that a “Historical Interpreter” finishes off our tour by telling us that by the end of his life, Washington, “even wrote in his will to have all his slaves freed upon his death.”
And that was it.
They gave everyone the impression that Washington saw the errors of his ways and freed all the slaves at Mount Vernon in his will. But my girls had remembered a different story from me.
So, after the tour, on Washington’s own Bowling Green, my girls are looking at me in front of his mansion. “What’s the truth? Is it what you’ve told us or what they said?” Filled with doubt, I look it up on the phone and confirm that I’m right and the guides offered us a very misleading short-hand. I don’t know if they cut off the story either to make Washington look good or to leave us with an uplifting feeling about the Washington family’s dependence on bondage… But at least right there, in front of Washington’s mansion, a discussion is had by a white dad to his bi-racial daughters and extended Chinese American family about the many shades of Washington’s moral compass.
On the one hand, this is a shitty moment for me. Everyone I love is looking at me, waiting for a more sound explanation about how the father of democracy regarded people who didn’t look like him so poorly.
But at the same time – how incredible is it that on this so called sacred ground I can huddle with my family and openly converse about what possible assholes Washington and his family were without fear of being dragged off and punished. What other holy resting place of a revered dead leader in the world would allow one to do that? This observation may seem extreme, or a consolation. I don’t think it is either. It means something to me.
When I return to the hotel, I deep-dive on the internet instead of taking a much needed nap. Apparently, we missed a whole part of the museum exhibit at Mount Vernon where they address the duality of the Washington family’s morality. They acknowledge that Washington’s adopted grandson “Washy” was a known rapist who fathered children with the people he kept in bondage – they examine more of the truth. I’m sorry we didn’t go into the exhibit and only relied on the quick tour. Though I’m glad to have found out there is a more significant discussion on the Mount Vernon grounds.
As we are leaving, Piper gets pulled aside by a journalist conducting some sort of poll about what Washington means to kids based on what they learned by visiting Mount Vernon. She’s conflicted. A lot of heady discussion just swirled around Piper’s head in the last hour. I don’t know if she knows how to digest or articulate any of it. But I’m glad she’s at least conflicted. I don’t want anyone I love to swallow blind idolatry of some long-dead figure. That’s not thinking. That’s just propaganda and extremism. That’s not what I think useful people in our world should be about. Piper’s at least thinking. Trying to figure it out. Maybe in time, she will find balance to the answers she seeks. But for now, at least, the gears are grinding.
And that’s just this afternoon!
Earlier in the day, we brunched with team Sheingate! Leo’s parents and grandparents came and met us for a delicious buffet brunch where our families could catch up and chat. It was filling and wonderful. Then afterward, we went to the town of Alexandria to walk the street market and have ice cream. It was great catching up with them and introducing them to Team Yu. I hope we can have Thanksgiving together.
The last few days have been happening fast. My feet hurt from all the walking. I have blisters on my feet, but in a way, the hurt feels good, for they signal time well spent and well-walked city.
The day after the Capitol tour, we hit the museum of American History for the first part of the day, then the kids abandoned us to return back to the hotel. Charlie was already stuck in her room, working, but Leo left her side to hit the Museum of Art with us. In the evening, we tackled the National Mall, walking along the stretch of the reflecting pond and taking in all of the monuments along the way. AND WE SAW FIREFLIES. Ever since seeing the fake ones in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, I’ve always hoped to see fireflies in real life. And now I have.
We finished off our evening walk with the powerful MLK monument…
then when most everyone was ready to head back to the hotel, Tiffany, Leo, and I pushed on to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. The memorial is under renovation – but very run down, with paint peeling and stucco falling off. I’d never been and have always been curious, and all I can say is that its condition seems relative to Jefferson’s tarnished reputation of late. The impression of the joint felt unremarkable and more of a place for locals to hang outside the tourist crowd.
The next day was our White House tour. I enjoyed walking through the halls we were allowed to go through – but felt it was too short. Frankly, I feel like I should be regarded as a bit more of a VIP and should have been invited for a coffee, whiskey, or whatever with President Biden – but maybe next time. Security was tight. It seems like the hardened perimeter around the White House gets wider and wider as time passes, but again, these are the times we live in. I appreciate Joyce’s friend’s daughter for working hard to get us passes to take the tour. It was an experience to remember, regardless of what I think I deserve. I wanted to get a picture with her but we were shooed away by the Secret Service for loitering on the block too long when she met us outside after the tour.
After lunch, Joyce, George, Piper, Chase and I walked back to our hotel room on foot through a residential district and I can’t exactly spell out why but it just felt special. The weather was perfect, the moment felt nice. It was refreshing to experience something very un-touristy. The lamp posts were in the neighborhood were papered with this:
During the evening, the kids went to an escape room, and Tiffany waited for them in the lobby while Joyce, George, and I stumbled around China Town to hunt down a watering hole. George found one that was very clearly a locals-only joint – we practically heard a record scratch when we walked in. But everyone was friendly enough, and we chugged our PBR and Jameson while the locals chummed up to each other and spontaneously danced to the playing beats. Once our glasses and cans were empty we hopped out to another joint for some swankier Gibsons. By the time we were done, the kids were ready for dinner, and we all rendezvoused at Nandos for a nice, simple meal.
And here I am – nearly at the end of our vacation to Washington D.C. in 2022. We came home from an evening at the Wharf, where the kids played video games while the adults ate Shake Shack and slurped down some booze.
One thing I haven’t been very specific on during these two entries is where the kids are in their lives. Tyler is growing into a beautiful young lady as she slugs through her teenage years. Piper is just having a good old time. She likes what she likes (shopping, eating meat, squishmellows) and isn’t afraid to express it, laugh at herself, or anything else, for that matter. She’s amazing. Charlie is a college grad and already working (Fuck you, statistics! Who says her generation can’t find jobs after college?) Charlie works remotely for the Center for Public Integrity. She hasn’t been able to be with us for much of this trip, but I’m proud of her as she begins her adult life! Leo has become a big part of our lives as he is Charlie’s partner in crime. I hope that his companionship with Charlie has made staying at the hotel during work hours easier.
And Chase. Chase is going off to college in about two weeks. NYU Tisch, Game Design. The other night I watched an old video of her walking up the Lincoln Memorial stairs, spinning, showing off for the camera, all the way up, with that naughty look on her face she used to always have…and I broke down. I wept while watching and then cried in the shower later. My eyes were leaking until I fell asleep. It fucked me up.
Chase has worked so hard to get to where she’s going, and I couldn’t be more proud. But I’m going to miss her severely. The pandemic gave us extra, concentrated time together, and I’m grateful for all of it. I got to know her better than I would have otherwise. But now she’s off to start a new phase of her life that doesn’t include us in it daily. That is a painful truth that I’ve lived through before with Charlie. It’s no less painful the second time around. In fact, it may hurt just a little bit more. We will have many more vacations together, I hope. But this is the last one of a specific era. She’s my Monkey. My Demon. She’s the little rager who would scream and writhe in my arms at restaurants, making everyone around think that I was kidnapping her as I hustled her out to give everyone around us peace. And now she’s a brilliant, ambitious young woman diving head first into college and New York City…and I have no choice but to watch from afar. It’s how it should be. But as her father, I can’t help but feel an deep tug about the whole thing. I hope she had a good vacation. I know a lot of what we did wasn’t exactly her cup of tea, but I hope the time spent with family felt as vital to her as I wanted it to be.
So tomorrow we fly home. We will wake up early to hit the Museum of Natural History for Charlie and Leo, and then we will bustle ourselves to the airport and back to Los Angeles we go. Nine days later or so we will fly Chase to NYU to drop her off so that she can embark on her magnificent, hard-earned adventure.
Thank you, Washington D.C. You make us angry. You infuriate us. You house a lot of assholes. Yet you are an amazing, intimidating, well crafted cradle for our government, and we put all our hopes into you to get it right more often than not. You hold endless, evolving stories of what America was, is, and could be. It’s sometimes scary shit. So please, stop being so scary. Maybe you have taught us lessons we might not realize exist until well into the future. I hope you are still around when we realize them.