A Decade Later: At Home in Washington, DC

Ten years is a fairly long time in anyone’s life, especially for someone still shy of his thirtieth birthday. Just over ten years ago, I made the move that a great many high school graduates make each fall. I packed up my bags, hopped in the family minivan, and headed off to college. Although my particular university is less than four hours away from my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA, it was a whole new world to me. Some of the typical collegiate accompaniments – freedom, opportunity, and experience – greeted me soon after I walked onto the campus of Georgetown University. Was I ready for all of them? Certainly not, but I thought I was. Looking back on it now, a decade ago this very week, still residing in the city that has become my adopted home, I hardly recognize the boy I was, but I know he is the reason I have become the man I am today.

What is home? When a person moves about throughout his life, what makes one place stand out relative to the others? Many clichés attempt to tackle this, including ones as mundane as, “Home is where the heart is.” This may well be true, but one physical space likely feels more comfortable and inviting than others, and I have always wondered why. Do we develop a natural attachment to where we are at that particular time, or do we always look back at the home that was by way of the proverbial rose-colored glasses? With all apologies to my birthplace, home for me will likely always be Washington, DC. Washington is where I found out who I really am, and where I matured from a wide-eyed student into a self-assured adult. Ten years after this transformation began, I still look back and think about the role our nation’s capital played in this process.

I know the back roads and the highways as well as I ever knew them in Pittsburgh, and I breeze through neighborhoods on the way to a local theater or restaurant. Ten years of driving in an around the same metropolitan area certainly breeds of level of familiarity, but that does not do this feeling justice. For some time, I have felt that Washington is a part of who I am. While living in this city, I bought my first car, I leased my first house, I found my first job, and I fell in love for the first time. I met the woman I am about to marry while working in Arlington, VA, less than a mile from the campus I lived on for four years. This fall, we will be married at Dahlgren Chapel on the grounds of that very same university. It has been a part of who I am, and it has grown to be a part of who we are as well.

A lot has changed in the time I have been here, but it is a mark of my time here that I can look back upon it and remember so much. Bill Clinton had just entered office when I came to Washington, ending twelve years of rule by the likes of Reagan and Bush. Time moves on, and a Bush is once again in the White House. I have seen USAir Arena (or the Cap Centre, depending on how long you have lived here) and RFK Stadium reduced to harmless relics, and I have watched as the MCI Center and FedEx Field were erected in their place. I have seen e-mail and the internet grow from obscure technology to mainstream necessities. Imagining life now without these two items seems downright impossible! The movies and music that I love the most were unveiled during this very same decade. This time period marked the true adoption of cellular phones and heralded the arrival of items like the DVD player and digital cameras. Come to think of it, how did we live back in 1993?!

As we look back, it gives us an opportunity to think about what was and what is still to come. What will this city look like in another ten years? What will I look like? With momentous events like a first home purchase and the arrival of children looming on the horizon, what will the future hold for me and my family? I cannot say I have the answers to those questions, but I am fairly certain that this great city will play a role in it. Without the many opportunities it has afforded me over the years, I doubt I would be in the position I am today. I have had ten years to experience what Washington, DC has to offer, and I have not even begun to tap into everything there is to behold. It excites me to think how much more I will learn about my home as time ticks by, just as I am pleased to think about how it will continue to help shape who I am. A decade may or may not seem like a long time, but it is enough time for me to recognize that Washington, DC is the place I will always call home.

Submitted 8/29/03.