Bonnie & Clyve: The East vs. The West

Billy has always been baffled how I know so much about US history, and I owe it all to growing up in Virginia. I had fieldtrips to Gettysburg and Jamestown and slave plantations while he had fieldtrips to This is the Place park and the Utah state capitol. Not that one is better than the other, but Virginian history is much more tied up with American history. My dad worked in DC, and so when I went to visit my Dad at work, we’d stop by the White House or US Capitol building or the National Mall. My dad’s fancy pants friends let my family take a tour of the west wing of the White House. NBD.

My grandmother--or Gee Gee, as we call her--lived in Williamsburg up until she passed, and went to church at the Bruton Parish church on Duke of Gloucester street. It was built in 1683 (just a taaaad bit earlier than Utah churches). It’s also where George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson were known to attend church. Not that I’m name-dropping or anything. We even lived in an old log cabin that was around during the Civil War. My mom suspects our home was where Stonewall Jackson spent the night with his troops after a battle. He’s probably the ghost that haunted that old cabin too. Not that I jump to conclusions or anything. Even where we vacationed every year in the Outer Banks is where some conspiracy theorists think Virginia Dare and the Lost Colony disappeared to. No offense Utahns, but learning about Jeremiah Johnson and all those pesky seagulls just isn’t as exciting to me.

When I first moved to Utah in 5^th grade, we were doing the Hope of America pageant and learning all the annoyingly cheerful songs. I remember hating all of the songs, but especially the Utah song. I even refused to sing it during our practices and was fully prepared to tell my teacher that I wasn’t singing because I wasn’t from Utah and didn’t feel any sort of allegiance to it. Which didn’t even matter because my teacher never asked. As I was trying to make friends, I bragged to my classmates that I was related to Pocahontas—as 5^th graders do. (In full disclosure, my great grandmother claimed the relation, but once my mom got into genealogy, she hasn’t been able to find the connection). This was a rather unimpressive claim to fame as the kids in my class all thought that Pocahontas was nothing but a cartoon character and wasn’t I so sweet for thinking she was real? This moment was the first time in my life that my jaw literally dropped. And probably the exact same moment that I became prejudiced against the Utah school system. *For anyone reading this, Pocahontas was a real person/child bride even though Disney didn’t exactly get the story right* To be completely fair, kids who grew up in Utah probably know way more than I do about the Louisiana purchase, the gold rush, and the Mormon pioneers (although the pioneer part is probably more from all their ancestors and church than actual school).

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve come to develop a love for Utah and its raw beauty. And I claim Utah as my home since I lived there for 15 years and married a Utahn. But all of this is a long-winded way of saying that Billy doesn’t know crap about US history. I love him to death and he knows every name of every vein, bone, muscle, or fluid in the body. He’s just not a history buff like I am.

So, when we went in to explore DC on our own over the last half of our Christmas break, it was really exciting for me to try and brainwash him. He’s been to DC before when we came out for my sister’s wedding, but my Dad only took us on a condensed tour a few hours before Billy’s flight left back to Utah. So, this time we really got to pick and choose just what we wanted to do. We saw the White House and I pointed out the security booth where I went in to eat lunch at the White House mess last year. And I told him the trick to knowing whether the President is at the White House or not. We also tried to pick out where the snipers were hiding, because we’re 5 years old. We visited Arlington National Cemetery where my Granddad and Gee Gee are buried. We hadn’t been able to visit my Gee Gee’s grave since she passed last year. And Billy had never visited my Granddad’s grave. It was really special to share that experience with him. My granddad died when I was very young, but from the stories I’ve heard, I still feel very close to him. And my Gee Gee loved Billy because he taught me how to golf. And because he has a way with older women. We were also able to meet up for lunch with a friend who we met in Grenada. He introduced us to Union Market and we chatted about missing Grenada and how great DC is. My dad is so into the political/historical stuff in DC that I’ve missed out on the awesome food experience there, so I’m glad a real local could show us. In the two days we went to DC, we also visited the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, the Air and Space museum, and the Holocaust Museum.

Pictures of victims of the Holocaust

I had never been to the Holocaust Museum before, because I was too young when I lived there. I’ve always been fascinated by the Holocaust. In high school, I did a research project on Adolf Hitler because I was so baffled by how he rose to power and became such an awful person. That was probably the first time the NSA flagged me, and then my Google search history has continued the need for my monitoring. Going through the Holocaust museum, I was prepared to be sad, but I didn’t realize how much I would learn. In school, they never mentioned the fact that the US didn’t really do anything about the Holocaust. We didn’t do anything when we should have. We let it happen. We were so worried about Jews taking our jobs and ruining our economy that we let millions of Jews be tortured and slaughtered. What a shameful time in American history. Since going to the museum, I’ve read Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank, and Night by Elie Wiesel (I know, I can’t believe I hadn’t read them before now either).

4,000 shoes on display in the Holocaust Museum. When troops liberate the concentration camps, there were very few living prisoners, but hundreds of thousands of shoes in huge piles. The Nazis valued the leather from shoes more than they valued a Jewish life.

I also was able to show Billy the house I grew up in. He had seen it before without me—the men all went to see it while the women were having a brunch on my sister, Erin’s wedding day. I hadn’t been back myself since my Dad was sworn in as a judge when I was 14. Re-experiencing things as an adult is so strange. Going back to my childhood home, I didn’t realize how far away from civilization we lived. Or how crazy it was of my parents to buy a tiny log cabin on the mountainside in Virginia with 4 children while my mom was 8 months pregnant with me. And the cabin only had baseboard heating. I also discovered that the huge hill that I used to sled down and be so exhausted while climbing back up, was actually pretty tiny. And to see how far away the house actually was from the Taylorstown General Store where my 8-year old self would walk with my 3-year old sister to get candy ALONE.

While staying at my parent’s house, Billy even got to experience a Lucketts dump run. My parent’s home in Waterford is outside the trash service boundaries and so every Saturday, they take all of their trash to Luckett’s Elementary School where they collect trash and take it to the dump for you. This is the same place we took our trash when we lived in Taylorstown. Every Saturday, my dad and I would go together to take the trash to the dump and then get bagels for breakfast. When Tanne got old enough, she’d come too. It was on one of these Saturday morning trash runs that my dad made Tanne cover her ears and told me that we might be moving to Utah. Tanne couldn’t know because she would blab to my older siblings, and my parents didn’t want to worry them with it until it was a sure thing. It was cool to be able to share those memories with Billy while we were better able to visualize them. And we both agreed that my parents are crazy and we are never commuting that far.

The house I grew up in. When my parents first bought it, it was only that log cabin on the side.

All of these excursions are part of my grand master plan to have my western boy develop a love for the East. I don’t know how successful my scheme has been, but the process has made me miss the East more than ever. We recently told Billy’s school our top 3 choices of areas we would want to live in for his clinical years. We get a lot of questions about this part—but to try and clear it up: this is NOT for his residency. He still has two more years of medical school which are the clinical rotations. Up until now, he has been in typical classes with lectures and labs and tests and studying. But come August, he will be working and learning in actual hospitals in the US. This is where he’ll be exposed to a lot of different specialties which will help him to decide which specialty he wants to do. Then, in the winter of 2018, he’ll need to pick a specialty and start applying for residencies. Med school is a whole lot of studying, applying, interviewing, test-taking, and some more studying. And if you come from a Caribbean medical school, it’s a whole lot of moving. We put our top 3 choices for clinical rotations as 1) Reno, NV; 2) Atlanta, GA; and 3) Chicago, IL. We won’t find out where they placed us until July, so we’ll have about a month to find a place to live and then move. We put Reno first because Billy is a western boy and because we’re poor. But I’d prefer Atlanta because I’m hoping living there will complete the conversion process. And my mom wants us to live in Chicago because she thinks that my great great grandfather “Moccasin Jim” Stell started the Great Chicago Fire. So, our family owes the city big time. But through this whole decision process, we’ve decided that we’ll be happy wherever we end up, so long as there’s a Target nearby.