Though it is home to nearly three-quarters of a million people, Washington D.C. has always struck us as a transient city, our times here always steeped in impermanence. The District — as opposed to the City or the Second City, both of which we've called home — has never fully endeared itself to us. We pass through here every couple of years, like migratory birds en route to their nesting grounds. Sometimes we only spend a few weeks or a handful of months. Once, we lived for nearly a year just east of Capitol Hill, but even then we never felt quite at home in the nation's capital.
And yet, there is a growing sense of familiarity — an acquired ease that has increased with every brief sojourn. This time around, we are staying in northern Virginia, just outside the District's boundaries. We lived not far from here a couple of tours ago, and have fallen back into old routines, ordering food from the same restaurants, taking our kids to the same playgrounds, seeing the same local bands at the same concert venues. D has rejoined the hockey league in which he had played previously and sometimes also plays pickup with an Ultimate Frisbee group he had joined during our last stay in the District.
Several times, we've arranged play dates for the kids with other Foreign Service families, rekindling friendships from our time in Moldova, Rwanda, the Philippines. The kids do not remember their old playmates but instantly form new bonds with their former friends. Meanwhile, we get caught up in bouts of déjà vu.
Because we've lived it all before, we've found it easy to establish a routine. The kids are in school and have their extracurricular activities — baseball and soccer for Munchkin, dance and swimming lessons for Junebug. We have our work and training. Days blend together, weeks run into each other. And just like that, our first month back in D.C. is now in the rearview — gone in the blink of an eye. With October upon us, the time has come to start planning for our next move, even if it's not exactly around the corner quite yet.
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