Dum-Dums and Bolsheviks

My husband, as my sons and almost-5-year-old nephew settle down to watch "Guardians of the Galaxy 2": Be careful with this movie. It might not be appropriate for him.

Almost 5-year-old nephew, loudly, about five minutes in: Showtime, A-Holes!

Me: Too late.

Next time I have to run a meeting for the government client (oh my God, the meetings and the PowerPoint presentations), I think that will be my introduction. In fact, "Showtime, A-Holes" might be my first PowerPoint slide.

*****

I work in a pretty large office building that sits on the edge of the Twinbrook neighborhood in Rockville, Maryland. Twinbrook was built just after World War II, as the flood of returning soldiers gave rise to a housing shortage, which was mitigated by construction of what used to be called "tract houses." The streets are named for World War II sites and battles and military figures: Ardennes Avenue, Marshall Avenue, Farragut Avenue, Halsey Road, Midway Avenue.

Most of the houses in Twinbrook are small; 3-bedroom saltbox-style houses on 1/4-acre plots. After 60-plus years, the neighborhood, filled with mature-growth trees and shrubs and flower gardens (some better-tended than others) is a riot of growth during a rainy spring.

The residential part of Twinbrook gives way very suddenly and abruptly to a burgeoning business district surrounding the Twinbrook Metro stop. For people who don't live in Rockville, I suppose it's just the opposite--the place where they work turns very suddenly into a mid-century residential neighborhood filled with the kind of homes that some journalists would condescendingly describe as "modest." I don't live in Twinbrook, but I live just 15 minutes away in a neighborhood not unlike it. So for me, it's the former--it's as if I'm out for my usual walk and I turn the corner and there's a 10-story office building two doors away from a neighbor's house.

Oddly enough, the business district doesn't appear to encroach upon the neighborhood, nor the reverse. A residential neighborhood is very peaceful during the middle of a weekday, and I like to walk for a few minutes at lunchtime, both for exercise and to gather my energy for the afternoon. Just a few steps away from the building, the street feels completely suburban and residential, so much so that more than once, I've turned around to return to the office and feared for a moment that I walked too far to get back in time for an afternoon meeting. It's the trees--the curtain of green completely blocks the view beyond a few steps, making it impossible to see the rest of the neighborhood beyond the block where you're standing. It's like you can't see the forest for the trees; or more accurately, you can't see the trees for the lack of forest.

*****
All of that? Apropos of nothing. Description for its own sake.

*****
Me to coworker: There's a big basket of candy in the kitchen.
Coworker: I saw it, but it's just a big pile of Dum-Dums.
Me: There's a lot of good stuff in there, too. You just have to dig past the Dum-Dums.

And is that not a metaphor for life itself?

*****
I'm reading A Gentleman in Moscow, as my friend recommended. She didn't steer me wrong. I'm only about 20% in, and I'm all agog. It's like reading a Wes Anderson movie: A quirky Russian nobleman befriends a sassy 9-year-old Ukrainian girl, and the two of them explore every corner of the huge Moscow hotel where the nobleman is under lifetime house arrest. It's all fun and games now, of course, but I'm afraid to keep reading. No good ever comes of a Russian nobleman once the Bolsheviks get hold of him.

It's Saturday morning now. I watched some of the royal wedding, though not live. In 1981, I watched the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana live, but I was a teenager and it was summer. Full-time working mothers don't wake up at 4:30 on Saturdays unless we have to. Anyway, it was lovely, and the gospel choir singing "Stand by Me" made me proud to be American. If pressed, I couldn't come up with a single reasonable practical justification for the existence of the royal family. But not everything is meant to serve a practical purpose.  If the Bolsheviks had understood that, then a lot of suffering could have been avoided. But as Isabelle Sallafranque tells Princess Luba Couranoff in another of my favorite novels, there had to be a revolution.