I wasn't going to write a diary for Loving Day. For one thing, it's the sort of thing where in this day and age, it ought to go without saying that it was just and right, just like women's suffrage and the end of slavery. For another, it was a bit too personal, or so I thought. But after reading Teacherken's excellent-as-usual diary and adding my own experience in a comment there, I find I have a lot to say about it whether I really want to say it or not. So here goes nothing... Dear State of Virginia,
Hi, it’s me, Dave. It’s been 23 years since that wonderful summer when my family arrived, and eight years since I left you for the last time to date. Lots has happened to me since then, but it’s the changes you’ve made that are the real story here. Most notably the changes that have come in the 45 years since you found yourself on the wrong side of history.
But hey, I’m not here to kick you while you’re down. I’m here to say thank you. You see, Virginia, you may well have saved my life just by virtue of being the great state you are. And that’s why I went on to marry a woman you wouldn’t have allowed me to marry back in the day. I don’t know if you want my gratitude or not (my gut says no, since you elected Bob “Confederate History Month” McDonnell), but you’ve got it in any case.
So just what do I have to say to my fellow Kossacks about my relationship with you, Virginia? I scarcely know where to begin…oh, who am I kidding? I know exactly where to begin, and so do you, since you were there. Yep, it was that morning at IHOP in Arlington in the summer of 1989, the blueberry pancake breakfast. That was my “It gets better” moment, the moment I knew life was worth living after all and that there was a big, beautiful world out there. I guess there were a lot of places where that could have happened, but Arlington is where it did happen. So, thank you. I’d better pause here and explain just what blueberry pancakes have to do with anything. I’ll try to keep this short.
My family moved to Northern Virginia in the summer of 1989, and it wasn’t a moment too soon. My hometown - I still call it that although I haven't lived there since 1989 and will likely never go back there - is Manchester, New Hampshire. Since this is a website full of political junkies, plenty of the folks reading this letter no doubt know exactly where Manchester is. They see it on CNN every four years, and maybe they've even been there to volunteer for a campaign. (If anyone reading this worked for Paul Simon in 1988 and you remember seeing a shy high school freshman who wouldn't shut up about the latest Beatles trivia he'd learned, well, it was nice meeting you too!) What they probably don't know, unless they've lived in the area or know someone who has, is that in Reagan's America, it was not an easy or pleasant place to grow up. There hadn't been any industry there to speak of since the textile mills moved to Georgia and the Carolinas in the 1930s (thank you, right-to-work), decades of "no taxes, ever, under any circumstances" meant that the schools were poorly funded (thank you, Union Leader), and it was entirely possible to grow up not knowing anyone who even wanted to go to college, much less actually going. I was all but unique among my friends at school in that my parents were still married.
And me? Well, I was a disillusioned, introverted underachiever who hated school because the pervasive hopelessness had taken its hold both directly on me and through strained relations with my parents, who were equally miserable there. (Out of respect for my mother, I won't elaborate on that here - but things did get ugly now and then. Let's just leave it at that.) Surely you remember the state of mind I was in on that day in June 1989 when I made the first of several drives down I-95 to visit you, Virginia, before we moved there to stay. Lonely and disillusioned and angry, that was me – a smart kid, but with a lousy attitude about school and love and family and, well, nearly everything.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the drive down had been a lovely one. I have often said my first look at the green lawns of Arlington and Fairfax felt like getting out of prison. I guess that’s hyperbole (I have never been in prison, thank heavens), but it most certainly was manna for my tortured soul. And that service apartment in Arlington where Dad’s office put us up while he and Mom were working through all the red tape of the move? Loved it! It was just the sort of thing I used to dream of back in Manchester – someday I’d live in a high-rise apartment in a big city neighborhood, and for the summer at least, it had come true! When we first walked in that door, I envisioned a delightfully relaxing and grown-up feeling summer.
But not everything had gotten better – you remember that, Virginia, don’t you? That’s right, Mom hated that apartment. And when Mom was that pissed off, no one else in the family had a right to be happy about anything. So that first week or two were extremely uneasy even though I loved the apartment. I literally could do no right – every time she even walked by in the hallway, it was another egregiously nasty comment. And of course, Sis handled it the way she always did when Mom lost her cool: she took it out on me. After all, I couldn’t very well go to Mom for help; she probably would have put me in the hospital. So Sis was free let off steam by kicking me in the gut and worse, knowing there was nothing I could do about it. I’d survived plenty of bullying at school, only to get treated to this now at home! There are some things where even a kid knows that “you’ll understand when you’re older” is bullshit – there’s nothing to understand – and this was one of them.
Still, those long afternoons watching VH-1 and avoiding my mother’s reign of terror were not totally in vain. I had all the time in the world to assess my future and realize just how important it was that I try harder in school so I could go to college and get the hell away from those bitches. But I can’t deny it was discouraging to have come all that way and still be subjected to the same constant nastiness I’d been living with all those years back home. But it was the blueberry pancakes that gave me true enlightenment. That, of course, couldn’t come until I was out from under Mom’s thumb, since she wouldn’t even let me leave the apartment while she was around. That’s why, when we went back up to New Hampshire after a couple of weeks, I was perfectly prepared to beg until my knees were numb for Dad to bring me back to Arlington with him when he went back there to work.
I was prepared to, but I didn’t have to – Mom was just as happy to be 600 miles away from me anyway. So it was back off down I-95 with Dad and me, back to your welcome embrace. I don’t remember just what compelled me to go to IHOP that morning, Virginia. I do remember it was a nice sunny morning, and Dad had already gone off to the office so I had the apartment to myself. It probably wasn’t too late in the morning – I always was a light sleeper, and Dad tended to get up very early – but I did have the apartment to myself. I probably made my way out to the kitchen to get some cold cereal for breakfast, and maybe read the still-novel-to-me Washington Post, only to be struck with the realization that I had my allowance in my pocket and no one to order me to stay in the apartment or even to ever be aware that I’d left! While I don’t recall it specifically, it’s easy enough for me to imagine the joy I must have felt at that moment.
And so off I went down the elevator and around the block to the IHOP that I had surely noticed at some point before then on our comings and goings. I don’t recall just how I got there, but I do remember being there. I remember savoring the delightful pancakes with their blueberry sauce and whipped cream and the blissful peace of not having to share my space with my family and pretend they weren’t driving me up the wall. I remember taking my time to enjoy my breakfast in peace, and pondering the train wreck that was the past few years of my life and rejoicing in the fact that it was all over and even looking forward to my new school in the fall, though I hadn’t seen it yet (I would, later that week), and then heading outside into the well-kept streets of Arlington to enjoy a day on my own.
Did I actually say to myself “Hey, life is worth living after all” at any point during breakfast? Probably not. But in an intangible but real way, I did come to that realization, whether consciously or not. Now, I won’t flatter you too much here. Just as Iowa — another state I’m proud to have called home — isn’t heaven, Virginia isn’t Utopia. It has poverty and racism and bullying in schools and a LOT of homophobia, and even my second time living in you (2001-04) was less than pleasant, as you recall.
But for me at the time, it was close enough to Utopia. At school that fall I was treated with respect by my classmates and teachers alike, and I came to like school for the first time ever. The DC suburbs were awfully uniform and all that, but they were safe and well-kept and I loved riding my bike through them. The public libraries had all the reference materials I needed and all the pleasure reading I wanted, and the public parks made for many an after-school baseball game with my friends. And oh, those weekend road trips to Shenandoah and the Civil War battlefields - absolutely magical. The worst I can say about those two years, actually, is the residual angst I had to deal with from my nasty memories of life back home. Now that I saw how enjoyable life could be, it threw into full relief juts how miserable things had been before. And that hurt, but it was an important lesson to learn.
So thank you, Virginia, for teaching me that lesson. It’s the reason why I didn’t become another teenage suicide casualty. It’s the reason why I got into a great college (albeit not one of yours ), and went on to earn two advanced degrees, one from an Ivy League institution and the other from Paris – all after barely passing tenth grade. It’s the reason why I rediscovered my childhood love of travel and the outside world, and have gone on to live and work in five different countries on three continents, including Asia, where I met my wife.
Yeah, that wouldn’t have gone over too well with you before 1967, now would it? I don’t mean to pick on you, as there was and is racism to be found in all fifty states. But like I said about my blueberry pancakes moment, it could have happened anywhere but it did happen in Virginia. What can I say? You were on the wrong side of history, but a couple of decades later you saved my life. I hope you can see the beauty in that photograph now, as well as the beauty in my story. And I hope you've come to accept and embrace the role you played in changing our country for the better just by virtue of being the bad example that proved the need for change. Love, Dave