My daughter, Christina Lara, wrote this essay and won first place in a competition. I posted it here so that everyone could read her wonderful work.
My Generation
The row house on Holmead Place is a century old. Three stories of burgundy brick tower over concrete steps and mismatching curtains on each level peer out at the newly constructed Giant supermarket. A rusted plaque stands guard above the mailboxes near the blue door: “This is the house the Richard rebuilt – 19871989.” You were five then. The perpetual inclination of the coming fall reflects the continuous shift of the inhabitants inside, especially in late August when you respond to Craigslist postings flurried in cyberspace announcing the room available in a “Group house, searching roommate! Columbia Heights, blocks from metro and shopping, 15 minute walk from bars and clubs.” The idle August sun forces verdant patches brown and broils the swelling trashcans rummaged nightly by brazen city rats, and you move in to live among dust bunnies in forgotten corners, multiple sets of dishware, glassware, silverware, and piles of mail that still arrive for strangers long gone. The weight of the building trumps the transitory people flowing through it. D.C. is home the day you comment prosaically to the person leaning on the high table at your side, cocktail glass in hand, D.C. is such a transient city. You’ve been here long enough to feel the perennial shift, to sense roots in a rootless city. “Will you renew your lease?” asks the person next to you. “Maybe,” you say, knowing the wind of Future pushes you along with the percipient clarity that eventually you’ll leave. After all, D.C. is such a transient city. You rush through historic corridors of buildings called Longworth, Rayburn, Russell and Hart or under florescent lighting of halls in Embassies or consulting firms or think‐tanks full of exotic fish‐people emitting sophisticated bubbles of thoughts reflecting an expert´s opinion on war, economy, debt, human rights, the Middle East, drug wars, environmental catastrophes, motherhood in the 21st century, teacher unions, pandemics, earthquakes in poor nations, oil spills in rich ones. You learn that standing out takes real effort when you are surrounded by people who are bottomless wells of impressive phrases: well‐read, well‐spoken, well‐traveled, well‐educated, well‐experienced, wellversed in various languages. You meet people who pass through for training on their way to Iraq or Afghanistan, and fleeting, light liaisons are the norm as you motion through dates in Ethiopian Restaurants or bike rides in Rock Creek Park. You are trained to not dwell on the past or project into the future, and on how give a tearless goodbye. You apply for internships and fellowships and scholarships, for a Master´s Degree in International Development or Aid or Urban Planning or Water Sanitation, to then work abroad or join the Peace Corps or start a company or return to Washington as a verified expert. Though returning you´ll find the same buildings with different people, and the places you once haunted with best friends and boyfriends are uncanny in changed light shaded over by a new administration or a new foreign dignitary or new interns ready to make something of themselves in the ramshackle house on Holmead Place where you once lived. “Nobody is from D.C.” You hear this all the time, and it isn´t entirely true, but it’s mostly true. Does your transience make you replaceable? The institutions continue in your wake. The paper is written. The conference planned. But years later, in a bout of nostalgia when you are far away from here, you will unearth an archived photo. “I was there,” you will say. In the image, you are pressed in, a billion bodies thick, cooled off by the frigid January air, and a vendor sells chemical hand warmers outside of the Smithsonian metro stop. You tried to be closer, grasping for proximity to the apotheosis of Washington in order to swing upon the axle of the wheel of History as the eyes of the world focused in one direction. Your ears strained to hear a legendary oath that echoed over the loud speakers set up like air traffic control towers along the perimeter of the National Mall, heralded over by the snipers that appeared like dots the distance. “I was there,” you say. The flow of the city is the city itself, its transience forever protected by the permanence of a History that you were there for and that remains long after you are gone.
