Visiting the Museums…………………..

(dedicated to Pres. Lincoln and Dr. King)

I have come to the museums in Dc since I was 4.

Now I am 44.

Yet I notice something new every time I see them….

From Pres. Lincoln’s speech where he spoke about 4 score and so many years ago from a battlefield in Pennsylvania, to another slain King who stood on that 19^th Century Pres’s memorial in the 20^th.

The museums are about history and have their own history too.

So many things have changed since I was 4.  My brother and I were brought here by our grandparents from Delaware.  Two and two make 4.

I have been married twice and have a kid with my 2^nd wife, who is now 14.   DC is different now in 2015 than it was in the 70's and 80's when Dave and I came to DC with our grandparents from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

My 2^nd wife and I visited the cherry blossoms in the tidal basin when Adri was 8.  Four and four make 8.  

I hope it will not be too late to say goodbye to my little girl.

I was a chaperon to her and some of her classmates in her 5^th grade year.  We went to the Natural History museums where the dinos live.  I feel like a dinosaur now and definitely not a 4 year old boy.

Life and history teaches us lessons.  Ones that I hope my 14 year old will learn.  From a 19^th  century, slain civil rights activist, president to a 20^th century PhD pastor slain for arguing about the same thing. 

Dr King gave a speech in ’63 from that memorial where I sometimes take shelter from the November rain and wind.  He spoke of a dream he had, it is the same one I have now in 2015, and I bet Lincoln did in the 1860s.  

I don’t have 4 kids like Dr. King did, I have one.

I hope Adri will grow up in a world that judges her by her character and not her color.  Whether here in DC or in El Salvador, where her mother is from.

History and place should come together as one and we should all move forward.