In the spring, on Easter Sunday, I met an uncommon girl. I was at my aunt & uncle’s house on Capitol Hill, the doorbell rang, I answered it, and she was there on the step. She was wearing a green hat and a yellow necklace, and she was leaning toward me like a ski jumper, with inquiring brown eyes and open-mouthed smirk. She said she was looking for Hilary (my older sister) and I told her she had the wrong house. She bought it and turned to leave, and I quickly said “No, no, this is it. You’ve come to the right place.”
She introduced herself as Ria, the mutual friend of a mutual friend. Through all the mutuality I figured out that she was acquainted with my sister and brother-in-law, who were in the backyard drinking mimosas. I showed her in, and she joined the fray, a scramble of aunts and uncles and cousins and eggs and sausage.
After several hours of listening to Ria’s unusual stories of travel and adventure in the Middle East, delivered by her hypnotically breathy voice, I was enthralled, and I wanted more. That evening, she joined Hilary, Mike and I for dinner, Easter dinner you might say, which for us was moules-frites and wine, served up by an irascible waitress at Granville Moore’s on H Street in northeast DC. After dinner, we walked west down H Street, past the tangle of steel rails, concrete barriers, piles of sand, and orange snow fence that has the gloomy task of transforming itself, with little help from the city, into the H Street Streetcar track. Making our way down E Street, Hilary & Mike peeled off at #309, our mother’s house, and I walked Ria to Union Station. She protested this chivalrous gesture, asserting her indisputable independence, but I was undeterred. Parting with a hug outside the Metro station, I gave Ria the most charming “nice meeting you” I could muster and turned for home.
So began the three-season affair that coincided precisely with my transition from the life of an aircraft carrier-based fighter pilot to that of a foreign exchange graduate student at l’Ecole de Guerre in Paris (the equivalent of the military war colleges in the States). Six months of this transition I spent in Monterey, California, taking French classes by day and talking to Ria for hours on the phone at night. She listened to my ramblings bravely, interjecting comments on things as varied as her one-time expertise on the balance beam and her preference for pressing her own olive oil. In turn, I listened as Ria told me about her family and her travels, her words chosen with careful precision, her outlook on life invariably inquisitive and accepting. She was in a transitional period of her own, having recently completed a master’s degree in Lebanon and returned home to Washington to find work.
As the spring and summer passed, Ria and I and spent time together when we could and became friends. We camped above a marine layer of cloud on the top of a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean on the California coast. We cooked together, exchanged favorite books, and met each other's families. She was my guest at two weddings and a funeral. I was her guest at The Barnes. In an unjust simplification, The Barnes Foundation is an art museum in Marion, Pennsylvania, but in truth it is much more. During our first of two visits there, on a rainy afternoon in May, I felt physically burned, exposed to the blistering inferno that is the finest collection of early impressionist art the world will ever know. I say this in spite of knowing next to nothing about early impressionist art, and because hyperbole sells. And because it may be true. I don’t have the time or chops to get into it here, but if you read up on Dr. Albert Barnes and his life’s work to bring art and education to the common man, and in so doing to promote civil rights, you will be a fan too. To say nothing of the art, which Ria and I both loved. 
In November, my French course ended. Ria was there for me at the graduation ceremony in Monterey, and we hit the road together early the next morning, driving across the country in a four-wheel-drive rental car. We braved the elements together, deciding that water is the one to really watch out for in the Rocky Mountains in late November. As we crossed an icy Nebraska we kept a tally of 18-wheelers jack-knifed in the ditch, deciding to hunker down for the night at the Sidney Motor Lodge after our count hit double digits. Before getting to Nebraska, we skied for half a day in horribly inhospitable conditions with Ria’s sister and her family in Salt Lake City, and we conducted a clandestine purchase of hundreds of dollars worth of fireworks in Cheyenne, my brother-in-law Mike having described the desired munitions as “semi-professional mortars”. Why? Well... The Dude Abides.
Back on the east coast after Thanksgiving, the days raced by, and my early December departure for Europe loomed. Ria and I suffered a self-imposed 48-hour separation, during which I took comfort in riding around Washington on a public bus, looking out the window at beloved monuments and seeing other buildings for the first time. One such beauty is the sand-colored concrete and polished aluminum structure at 1100 New York Avenue NW. I speculated that is was originally built to house either a Buick dealership or the headquarters of a team of crime-fighting superheros. As it turns out, it was built in 1940 as a Greyhound Bus depot, though I prefer to think of Flash and the Green Lantern balking at sky-rocketing rents in the 1970s and vacating the premises in a huff, clearing the way for retail space and lobbyists’ offices.
The night before I left the United States we had a going away party at my godparents’ house on Constitution Avenue. Hilary, a nurse at Georgetown University Hospital, had worked the night shift the night before, but roused herself in the early afternoon to serve as hostess, organizing food and drinks and helping decorate the Kellys’ beautiful home. We hung American and French flags and a garland of pine boughs on the front porch. Hilary prepared platters of French cheese, bread, olives, nuts, smoked salmon, and ham with brown bread and mustard. The round table in my godfather’s study was covered in a white tablecloth and served as the bar, stocked with French wines - reds, whites, and champagne, as well as beer, water, and sparking cider and fruit juice for the children. My cousin Emily, who in a previous life was an interior decorator in Narnia, made an interpretive croquembouche, presided over by an airplane-shaped cream puff in lieu of spun sugar. Later in the evening, Emily fashioned halos of wild vines to reward those who made the midnight trek to Lincoln Park to set off fireworks.
Mike Benson brought many wonderful attributes into our family when he and Hilary were married in 2006, but perhaps the most pleasing to me has been his enthusiasm for pyrotechnics. It was under his direction that Ria & I selected the Black Mamba and the Dark Knight from among the various mortar-launched fireworks on offer at the expansive Black Cat warehouse in Cheyenne. The man who sold them to us had a wild look in his eyes, and he nodded in respectful understanding when we told him what we’d come for.
One nice thing about setting off high quality fireworks in Lincoln Park is that even the naysayers are appreciative in the end, as are passersby, though less so the DC Police. Mike chatted with them curbside, with the cops doing most of the talking, as we made our way back to the house. I stood next to Mike in silent support of our actions, peering our from behind the vines hanging down from my halo.
On Saturday morning, with lingering shell shock from the fireworks, and a cloudy head from over-indulgence and lack of sleep, it was time to pack my bags. It was an exciting day, but also a bit sad. Hilary, Mike, and Ria took me out to Virginia, where we raised a glass of Dulles Airport’s finest sparkling wine at Harry’s Tap House on the main concourse.
With hugs all round, we parted at the entrance to the security screening area, and I walked away, with my sister’s toast from the night before still ringing in my ears and the smell of Ria’s coat in my nose.
“Adventures lie ahead,” I told myself, managing a smile as I began the strip-tease for TSA.
