Monumental

Tonight after dinner, two of my TGC friends and I walked the National Mall.  I have wanted to see the Lincoln Memorial for as long as I can remember.  The last two times I was here, things got in the way of that.  This time, though, I finally got my wish.

I took my time going up the stairs.  Too often when you have waited a long time for something and you get it, it turns out to be somehow less now that it is being checked off your personal "list."  Not so with the Lincoln Memorial for me.  The sight of one of the presidents I admire the most, one of the few I admire at all, sitting there like an American deity enshrined was powerful and moving.  He looked calm, serious, and watchful.  It seemed that he could, at need, rise from his chair and step out to rectify wrongs.  It's probably just as well that he cannot.  I cannot imagine that he would be very pleased with a lot of what he sees....

All of the monuments in the National Mall are beautiful.  They all inspire deep thought and self-examination.  I wonder what it's like to be a person of another nation and stand there.  As I stood at  the base of those pale marble stairs, all I could feel was that sense of belonging, of...American-ness.... for lack of a better term.  It wasn't flag-waiving patriotism or some latter-day superiority.  Rather, as I looked at those huge, strong hands wrapped around the arms of a mighty throne-like chair that Lincoln was some how of me and I of him.  We were connected in a way that was powerful despite having time, gender, and mortality between us.

That sense of the nation being present everywhere was also at two other monuments, the World War II monument and the Vietnam Wall.  The World War II monument was grand, ornate, full of symbolism and power.  Seen in the darkness of this October night, I cannot imagine a more fitting tribute for the generation who fell to defend freedom.

Across the park and lit only by a few soft lights from the path below sits the Vietnam Wall.  In the darkness, it takes you by surprise, the black of its slabs rising suddenly from the black of the surrounding night.  At some point walking along it, I realized there were framed photos lying at the base of it, a couple smiling and feeding each other wedding cake, he in a uniform, she in a white dress and a beehive.  There were letters carefully wrapped in ziplock bags to preserve them against the elements until whatever needed to read them could.  There were bundles of roses, funeral wreaths on stands.

Perhaps this was the most personal place of all for me.  I ran my fingers over the names, not really seeing them, but rather hearing the words of Komunyakaa's "Facing It" and knowing that had things been only a little different, my father's name could be trapped there, too.  There are no fountains or gold stars here.  Instead, there is only the silent dark wall, monument and memory-keeper, eternally strong, eternally grieving.

There is so much history, so much of what defines us as a nation present in those still figures and sculpted stones that line the grassy space at the heart of this city.  I feel connected to the nation again, to the people around me.  Despite our problems in the present, I am reminded of things we have overcome in the past, of the sacrifices made.  Everybody should come here.  Maybe we would be better off if everyone remembered.