Love!!

I’ve never really liked D.C. Sure, the first time I went was a little marred by adolescent angst, and the next time was for work. The highlights of my two previous trips were Archie Bunker’s chair at the Smithsonian and the Holocaust Museum–if you can call that a highlight.

Mostly D.C. seemed fraudulent. I can’t help but wonder how much of our money is spent keeping it as clean and manicured as it is. I can’t help but think about the rest of D.C. and the contrast to the National Mall.

But today I love D.C.

We got off to another late start, this time not because of our usual morning, West-Coast-time inertia, but because we boarded the dogs. We knew we would spend long days in the city while we were participating in National Equality March events. We didn’t want to leave them in the car, and couldn’t leave them alone in the trailer some thirty miles out of the city. So we found a kennel online who would take them last minute, called our vet for shot records, and deposited the dogs in Woodbridge for the next couple of days.

What was supposed to be a second or third stop for the day became our first stop: the Milk and Cookies welcome for LGBT parents and kids. Frances is not exactly of cookie-eating age, but it was a good way to meet other parents at the march. I was a little worried that it would be ill attended–after all, we’d heard that nobody would be able to make the march because it was so hastily planned.

As soon as we entered the hotel where the event was held, I knew I had worried for nothing. We followed the sound of children laughing, playing, screaming until it led us to the second floor ballroom. The place was packed. Every table seemed to be full. Set out were art supplies, and kids were making signs, hats, banners, bracelets, you name it.

Before we found a seat, we were approached by a couple of women with a video camera. We told them about our trip. The woman holding the camera put it down. “Let’s go outside,” she said to the other woman. We were asked if we’d like to do a longer interview, out in the hall where it was quieter. They were making a documentary called March On. We followed them out and sat in a couple of chairs wedged together in front of a tripod. We threaded mics under our shirts and told them all about ourselves, our trip, our hopes for what the march might accomplish.

Later I told Ami I hope they edit us to make us sound smart. I regretted not having our elevator speeches memorized. And I worried that my bra was showing. But all in all, the documentarians were sweet and warm, and the experience was a positive one.

After we live tweeted some pictures of the kids at the event in all their face-painted glory, ate some cookies, and talked to a number of parents, the party ended. We decided to go to a happy hour sign-making event next, and pushed a napping Frances in her stroller through the streets of D.C.

At the restuarant, people were everywhere with their markers, their posterboard, their happy gay gayness (sorry folks, but LGBTness just doesn’t have the same ring). I circled the room–rooms–and found a table that was emptying just as another group approached. Amy, a college student at Indiana, and her hometown friends, a couple from Atlanta, became our table mates. They shared their markers. We spent hours there, staying long past when the event was scheduled to end, through the President’s address at the HRC dinner.

I know that Obama was only trying to make peace with the queers–and some of the most mainstream queers, at that. Don’t confuse my emotion watching the speech, which could be judged by the tears that ran down my face, with approval of the incremental approach to equality. Don’t think just because I detoured from a diaper change to wave at the motorcade as it made its way back to the White House I endorse separate-but-equal civil unions.

But while Obama spoke, everyone in that room was gripped with a simultaneous emotion, one we were urged to believe in again through the presidential campaign last year. Together we held hands with our partners and looked up at the screens overhead. Some of us clapped. Some of us cried (me). Some of us crossed our arms and waited for something new to be said.

All of us. All of us. All of us, together, hoped.