As residents from around the Washington, D.C., area and tourists from far-flung corners of America (and the world, thanks to FIFA) gathered at the National Mall last Saturday, our lovely hosts decided on an itinerary slightly outside the mainstream: Instead of braving the heat and the crowds for fireworks and the Trump speech, we drove south for a pilgrimage to Mount Vernon, beloved home of the nation’s first president.
Though George Washington was not in Philadelphia to help draft and did not sign the Declaration of Independence Americans celebrate on July 4, his presence was already palpable among the Founders that summer of 1776. They were acutely aware of the coming danger and grateful for the general’s careful preparation for hostilities, and they understood that they were putting in his hands “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
I had visited Mount Vernon years ago as a young adult. But there’s something mysterious that age brings to an experience like this, a sobering awareness of how much has gone before to make today what it is and to draw the contours of tomorrow. As we strolled the magnificent grounds, walked through the very rooms where George and Marsha Washington slept, ate, worked, and entertained, observed the picturesque gardens, and stopped to pay respects at the president’s tomb, I was at times overcome by a sense of grounding, of “coming home” to a past I was not a part of but am completely indebted to.
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