washwords

So yesterday, after work, I decided to just take the green line home to stop at Ben’s and pay my respects for their 50th anniversary Ben’s Chili Bowl Celebrates Fifty Years With Three Free Events This Week! « Capital Spice.

Granted, it was a beautiful summer night, I’m a bit emotional (even for me), in love, and generally happy and seeing the good in the world.

But the scene there made me teary. A happy teary. Because the scene there was just so nice. Really truly nice. The nice that’s not an insult.

[Photo on flickr by “Jim Darling”Ben’s Chili Bowl 50th Anniversary on Flickr]

Whether it was the rocking music, “We’ve got the funk….” the diverse line streaming down the sunny U street, the cheery smiles, the infamous sign: “Who eats free at Ben’s? Bill Cosby. And NO ONE else,” I was moved. Moved to tears. The man in front of me said “I’ve been here since waaaay back in the day.” I told him I hadn’t been but I love the stories. I love that they survived doing what they do – the simplicity of half smokes and chili – and doing it well for 50 years.

I love that they made it, that they kept on keeping on through the painful days, the ugly days in our history and DC’s history. I love that they love what they do, and have stood for justice and freedom and equality without preaching, without anger or vitriol or indignation (even when they had a right to!).

I love the half smokes and that my friend took me there as a must-see when I first was single in the city, newly divorced, hurting and lost and new to everything again. And Ben’s was home, my new home. And now as I prepare to leave the city in a few months, it is comforting to me to know that things will remain the same. Here’s to you Ben’s – I hope to be there for your 100th!

The real reason I’ve been thinking about home is that I might be leaving this one soon. This one, being downtown, “THE city” (sorry, nyc), my hipster dupont city girl pad, my newly-divorced-to-single woman pad.

And, to top it off, I might be moving to … Northern Virginia, land of my constant mockery lo these many months! Oh the horror!

But the thing is, ultimately, home is “who”. Home is who you love, where you love, and cliche’ or not, home is where the heart is. Absent “blue pearl” granite even, home is where my love is, where we both can be, and where we can be together. Home is love and I have found it.

Against the aqua of my curtains comes yellow so bright, I think it must be car lights. It is 8:20 p.m.

I open the curtain to see that no, it is the summer sky before a storm.

Yellow beams hit my curtains, pebbled sandy driveway, clean white stone of the walls of my building. The rain is coming.

Thunder literally rolls over the yellow green of grass, magnolia tree leaves, footprints.

Flashes of white that stab the earth and listen, wait.

I open the curtains wide to breathe in the wet wind.

When the rain comes, it is in drumming, pattering waves. I love the smell, the taste, the feel of the night from my room, the same storms I watched from a similarly yellow-lit blue room of my childhood.

The summer storm makes me feel something is coming. And anything is possible.

[Photo by “Soleil 1016” on Flickr]