Kids and culture

I’m going to Washington in a couple of months for a conference and having some mixed feelings about it. The trip will be wonderful, I know, and I’m spending the time with my best friend from my last job, which I can’t wait for, but I have some Washington issues, to tell you the truth.

When Laura was three or so, I think, we went to D.C. to visit a cousin. I remember being thrilled—I’d never been there myself. I could finally see the White House. I could go to the Smithsonian. I could see big dinosaur bones. Maybe even the real thing, and not just casts. Growing up in South Carolina small-townville, I didn’t get a whole lot of exposure to—well, perhaps culture isn’t quite the right word, but I’m guessing you know what I mean. Some weeks our biggest outing ended up being an Icee at the laundrymat.

I absolutely envied Laura at times when she was a baby—we took her to the Field Museum in Chicago when she was one! We went to Ontario the next year! She had traveled outside the country for the first time when she was two—and that trip was the same time I traveled outside the country the first time! Well, I’m not totally stupid—I understood even then that she wouldn’t remember these things and her primary impression of Chicago evidently was that snowsuits were roughly equivalent to straightjackets. But I knew, even if the only trips we ever took were to the MLA or some other conference, she would have many of her initial travel and cultural opportunities as I was having them myself in my thirties. She grew up knowing scientists and visiting the studios of our artist friends. I wonder what my own life would be like now if I’d grown up that way.

And then I remember what happened when we went to Washington. We couldn’t take the stroller in any of the museums. That may not sound like a big deal if you don’t have children, but you try hauling a thirty-pound kids through however many acres those hallways stretch. On several occasions, we had guards following us to make sure our daughter—our well-mannered daughter, by the way—never touched anything. At the National Gallery of Art, we were actually stopped by guards on at least three different occasions because of the way we were carrying Laura—she couldn’t ride on our shoulders. She couldn’t ride on our backs. I can’t even remember the various offensive ways we must’ve tried to carry her, but I remember quite vividly not one single thing about the National Gallery of Art except that my daughter was bored and heavy and that the entire museum seemed to be deliberately designed to make all of us miserable. I literally cannot remember a single piece of art I saw that day.

I’m not taking Chris or the kids on this trip. I’m looking forward to a visit to the Library of Congress to see a Walt Whitman exhibit, and to tell the truth, I would love to go back to the Smithsonian or the National Gallery and actually see something this time. But I don’t know if I can—how could I enjoy something that shut me and my children out so completely last time? We take Will and Laura to the State Museum now, which is designed mostly for kids, and to Discovery Place, and even the Columbia Museum of Art has Family Fridays now, but now, as I’m making my plane reservations and thinking about my days in the big city, I just keep thinking about how unwelcome I was before in the museums—because I was somebody’s mother. Even in the dinosaur galleries, where you’d expect the kids, since they’re the only ones who could remember or pronounce a name like Protarchaeopteryx. My relationship with my government was vexed enough before I learned I couldn’t even love the museums.

Maybe I’ll try new things instead—the Hirshhorn or the National Museum of Women in the Arts, or maybe a little farther afield to Mount Vernon. My Midwestern friend is trying to understand slavery and the South, so that could be an interesting stop. I should probably spend most of my time at the conference, to tell the truth. When I booked my flight, I thought about staying an extra day or two, and finally decided I couldn’t—I didn’t want to be away from home that long. And some of that mystery, the wonder of those national treasures, just isn’t that appealing any more. Sad to say, I’m glad Laura was too young to remember that last trip, and it makes me wonder if I should’ve taken her to Disney World instead. In a way, both places present their own versions of history, and I’m not sure the Washington one is more accurate. Just less kid-friendly, and somehow a lot less appealing now.