Goodbye, DC

22Aug08

Well, I’m all packed in an upstairs room in AT’s house. My cab comes in an hour and a half. My flight leaves in four hours. My Nine Week Solo Adventure in DC has come to its end.

I’m already upset at how quickly I’ll forget the details that were so stamped on my everyday life here. I will forget the number of the bus I took to work every day — the 425 Fairfax Connector. I will forget that I liked to sit on the right side, in the middle section, in the last seat, next to the window. I will forget the names of the Opinion interns who sat near the front, left — Molly, who thought herself to be a heroine in her own novel, and Ben, who looked for me when we got off the bus and let me rattle on about my latest mishap; the other two interns’ names I’ve forgotten already, if I ever knew them. I’ll forget the crocodile smile of the driver on the 9:45 a.m. bus, I’ll forget the creepy older Asian man with the red cap on the 4:54 p.m. bus home. I won’t forget the boy who I used to make shy eye contact with on the 4:54, because that is the type of thing I romanticize and hang on to forever.

I will forget that, for the first seven weeks, I lived in Strong Hall #500, and that my roommate’s name was Emma. I will forget that, because I’d started showering in the morning regularly for the first time in my life, I was always falling asleep on sheets damp from used towels left there all day. I will forget locking myself out of the room with all my cookies supplies, and no shoes. I will forget cooking on the roof, boiling water, burning garlic, that time I started a fire when I cooked in the basement. Ha.

I will forget the mechanical white woman voice of “Step back, doors closing” as I took the Orange Line from Foggy Bottom – GWU to West Falls Church, in the direction of Vienna, then back in the direction of New Carrolton. I will forget the copies of the Express littering the seats and how I would rest my temple on the glass after a hard day. I will not forget how sad I would get every time the train tunnelled back underground between East Falls Church and Ballston.

I will likely never forget the stress of taking a cab — the Yellow Cab company — to and from the Metro station after I moved out to McLean for the last two weeks, though I will forget trying to master AT’s dad’s bike to replace the cab, and failing. I will remember my checking account hitting $32, the lowest since I opened it three years ago.

All the stuff at USAW — the Margaritaville contest, the celebrity research, the silly interviews — there are e-mails and clips to document all that stuff. It’s the mundane, the side course, the real world that I’m afraid to but know I will lose, just as I don’t remember what time the bells rang in high school or which classes I took in the tenth grade.

Now that I’m at the end of it, I think this was the defining moment of my summer:

I was in the kitchen with AT’s mother, aunt, 17-year-old sister and two preteen cousins. We had just finished eating and were washing up. I was standing around, trying to help, while AT’s sister and cousins started shrieking and throwing things. AT’s mom snapped. “OKAY, ALL THE KIDS OUT OF THE KITCHEN, NOW.” I didn’t know if I should leave. The cousins left. The sister, just a couple years younger than me, left. And as I lingered, still wondering, AT’s mom and aunt started chatting again with me, and we washed the dishes together. I was not one of the kids. I was an adult. I could stay.

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Tags: adult, dc, internship, leaving, remember