In the In-Between

In DC in the summer there is heat like a wet wool blanket. There are picnics with sangria and live jazz in the Smithsonian sculpture garden. There are swimming pools built into the roofs of apartment buildings and rainbows in the mist being sprayed on public gardens. There are $10 million dollar proposals that you are hired to lead-write, and there are bosses who support and praise you, and there are interns who come to you to ask you for job advice. There are little boutiques with sweet colorful overpriced plastic jewelry. There are tourists wearing helmets zipping by gleefully on Segways. There are friends who will skip work with you and flee to Six Flags Water Park on a sticky hot day. There are friends who welcome you into their homes, cook you homemade dinners specially designed around your picky palate, friends who have little items scattered throughout their place that you have given them over the years. There are friends who lay out fresh fluffy towels for you and make sure you have enough pillows. There are friend who stay up listening to your stories about the different places you have lived, and who tell you stories of their own, because they understand. There are trapeze classes and pedicures where fish eat the dead skin off your feet and there are kayaks to rent down by the river. There are friends that you have had lunches with in college, in The Gambia, in graduate school, in Uganda, and in Congo, who you now have lunch with in DC. There are friends who will climb with you up onto a bridge in downtown DC, on the other side of Roosevelt Island, and straddle their legs over the edge, hold their noses, and leap leap leap into the clear air, flying down into the cool Potomac with a huge splash that sends water droplets whirling through the atmosphere, emerging back into the sunlight gasp gasp gasping for air from adrenaline and laughter and joy.