I've lived in DC on Capitol Hill for darn near 20 years now, and I've had kids on the Hill for almost 15, and while I get a lot out of Facebook and Twitter and various listserves, I thought I wanted to be able to explore different topics a little more deeply. So, here I am. And I have to admit, I am compelled to write mostly because I want to document a little how my middle child inspires and challenges me. (Not that the other two don't, it's just that there's something about her that I can't quite put my finger on, so maybe I'll puzzle it out here and we'll see if that doesn't send her into therapy in about 5 years.) And of course, how living in the city, this not-quite-a-city, helps and hinders and shapes my parenting philosophy.
I also am consistently amazed and inspired by this little town inside this crazy city. I've now lived on Capitol Hill longer than anyplace else. And we didn't find our way here because we were schedulers for a senator, or we just had to live 12 blocks from the seat of US government. We just really liked the neighborhood. And when we first came here, it was pretty affordable, with lots of teachers, and police officers and mid-level government workers. Now, of course, it's changed a lot, and not necessarily for the better, but I'll get into that more later.
About me: I am kind of a native Washingtonian, though my claim comes through my father who was born at George Washington University Hospital and my grandfather who drove a cab, bused tables in an italian restaurant, cut hair, and finally was a milkman in DC for many decades. I grew up half my life in Prince George's County, PG Cowwnty, as I like to say, and then the second half of my life was lived in Reston Virginia, that mecca of planned communities, sister to Columbia, but still the red-headed stepchild of a lesser inspired and inspiring Robert Simon, to Columbia's James Rouse. Eh, but what can you do?
In College Park MD, I lived in a tiny bungalow on a basic street. In Reston, VA I lived in a 5 br colonial at the end of a pipe-stem off a cul-de-sac. I think it was somewhere between the sidewalks of College Park and the dark bike paths of Reston that I determined that I really didn't want to live in the suburbs ever again. I think if I had to choose now, I would chose College Park, with all it's white-trashy lovable-ness to Reston's cold anonymity.
After high school, private, catholic, all-girls boarding school in Middleburg VA, I might add, I went to Virginia Tech for about half a second and then ended up at a private all woman's college. Still in southwest Virginia, and partly at the prodding of my then-boyfriend who was at the private all male college down the road. My lousy ex notwithstanding, I have to credit him with giving me the idea. VaTech was just too big, and I felt lost in every class. Randolph-Macon Woman's College was small and intimate and it became a major formative presence in my life. Set on a beautiful Victorian campus, it was there that I began to love and appreciate architecture, and that dreamy, solid red-brick architecture, with arches, and windows and "trolleys" connecting the buildings, of decades past. I ran for student government, wrote for the newspaper, and was president of my dorm senior year. Double majored in History and English, and was this close to a triple major in Philosophy-but I totally wussed out.
My senior year in college my dearest friend encouraged me to go out one night instead of moping over lousy boyfriend, and that's when I met the greatest, funniest guy, my dear husband George. Fast forward a few long-distance relationship years later, after finally realizing I did NOT want to be an attorney after all, and we were married, and bought our first house on Capitol Hill, at the bottom of the market. Good thing too, since he was a teacher and I was a legal assistant and both of us had an eye on grad school. We were beneficiaries of a DC program that offered down payment assistance to teachers, firefighters and police officers. What a great program! We're still here, and, I like to believe, have made our community stronger by staying and putting our kids in the public schools and, well, just getting involved.
I went to graduate school for Urban Planning and Architectural History at UVA which is where George had already completed his Master's in Education, and while he toiled away in a DCPS high school as a teacher and then Assistant Principal, I was free to go to graduate school and study the City.
Then we had our son, followed by our daughter three years later, followed by another daughter three years after that, and a bigger house right across the street from our first one, and my husband traveled up the career ladder, while I immersed myself in my neighborhood and my kids' schools and got upset and bummed out about how public school kids were treated, and then I got to where I couldn't care so much or I would go completely insane, and now here I am, pretty much.
So I think that all of these things, my graduate work, my husband's urban school experience, my life as a stay at home mom and living in a small town within a small city all had impacts on me and how I raise my kids. Of course, I never really felt very confident in what I was doing, but my husband and I felt that if we had a message of firmness, fairness and consistency with our kids, it would all work out. And it has.
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