My visit to Northern Virginia

I was in Northern Virginia last week visiting my brother, Steve, and his family. It was freezing out, but the warmth everyone gave me more than made up for it. I had a cold when I boarded the plane in San Diego. By the time I got to Dulles, after stopping over in in Las Vegas and Chicago, my ears were completely stuffed up and painful. I wasn't aware of how stuffed up my ears were until Steve talked to me. (The Dulles airport seemed unusually quiet!) It was just like being under water. It made me appreciate how hard it is to actually have a hearing problem. I felt so detached from the world that everyone else was floating in.

I had two main reasons for going to Virginia when I did. Lila, my niece, was dancing in the Nutcracker and Camille, my younger niece, had a horseback riding lesson. I really enjoyed seeing both of them do what they love. Lila's performance was at a very fancy girls' private school (I'm talking horses, a stupendous view of a rushing river and what seemed like dozens of acres of property, with all the red brick buildings luxuriously spread out.) The performance was fun. Lila did very well and looked beautiful in her costumes.

Camille's horseback riding lesson was on the coldest day I was there. I think I was wearing four layers and still was freezing standing outside in the wind with my sister-in-law while Camille went round and round posting, trotting and doing other horse kinds of things. Knowing next to nothing about horses and horseback riding, I learned a lot watching her. I also learned a lot just listening to her talk about horses.

We went into "the district" (that means D.C. for all of us west-coasters) one day and visited some museums. The only time I had been there was once almost twenty years ago for a couple of hours. There is so much to see there. I would like to live near there sometime in my life so that I could really become familiar with the district. It is a three dimensional encyclopedia of American history and current events.

The only thing that made me sad about my visit was leaving. I just don't see this part of my family nearly enough. There is too much land between us.