Spring Break 2013--"The last full measure"

There are many trade-offs in life. Some well-known examples include the trade-off Adam and Eve faced in either abstaining from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and staying in the garden of Eden, or partaking of the fruit, leaving the garden, and "multiply[ing] and replenish[ing]" the earth; the trade-off all polities face between freedom and security (described by our friend and comic-book feline namesake, Thomas Hobbes); the trade-off the Portland Trail Blazers faced in the 1984 NBA draft between selecting the lanky but perpetually injured Sam Bowie or Michael "Air" Jordan; and the trade-off we all face, every day of our productive lives, between making guns and making butter. 

Among the most salient of trade-offs in our life has been BYU’s decision to forgo spring break, and to end the school year in April, at least a week earlier than other schools. In our culture, spring break is often thought of as an exercise in post-pubescent degeneracy—an opportunity for recently emancipated young people to free themselves from even the bare pretense of adult responsibility that university attendance supplies. Understandably, BYU wants no part in any such tradition. And BYU students, because of their early semester end-date, get a jumpstart on summer jobs and internships, a clear advantage over their peers.

We never regretted not having spring break while at BYU—after all, none of our friends were on spring break, and we’ve found that one rarely covets what one never sees. However, Harvard Law School, when faced with the same trade-off, has chosen to offer spring break and end their semester in May; and so we’ve suddenly found ourselves with a free week in the middle of March and no prior experience of what to do with it. Abject, willful degeneracy is certainly not an option—our religious convictions and native sensibilities prohibiting even its contemplation. Our first year of law school, ignorant of the possibilities, Sarah spent the week working and Michael locked in a closet poring over closely written legal textbooks in a frantic effort to discern, among other things, what would happen if the hypothetical John failed to properly deed his house to his hypothetical sister Jane—was it really possible that it could end up in the possession of his hypothetical wicked uncle Snidely?

Well, we’ve now had almost two years at law school in which to develop our spring break creativity; this year something had to be done. Some of our friends from the business school were planning to spend the week at a resort in Mexico; others would be hiking the Inca trail in Peru. With these exemplars of appropriate spring break behavior, we determined that we had to, at a minimum, escape the confines of the Boston metropolitan area (not exactly an ambitious goal, but when we see greatness, we aspire to a poor man’s mimicry). After torturous debate and discussion, we finally selected Washington D.C. as our vacation destination.

We headed south after Michael's classes ended on Friday, March 15th. We stayed Friday night in Tabernacle, New Jersey, at Janelle’s parents’ house. We’re so grateful to them for their unhesitating, munificent hospitality. On Saturday morning, we continued south to Mount Vernon, President Washington’s impressive estate on the western bank of the Potomac. The road leading to Mount Vernon runs adjacent to the Potomac and is lined with well-kept running trails (Sarah's favorite feature of any locale) and Colonial-style brick homes. Mount Vernon’s grounds are extensive, and we walked almost all of them—from the fruit orchards to the threshing barn to the slave quarters. The house Washington inherited was a modest, two-story home. But from the time of his acquisition he expanded and improved it relentlessly—adding first an additional story and then two massive wings—creating the celebrated mansion that attracts thousands of visitors today, and at which Washington himself hosted hundreds of the world’s dignitaries. It reminded us (in some degree) of President Hinckley’s penchant for adding on to his family’s East Mill Creek home. Both President Washington and President Hinckley, while perfectly happy in their domestic relations, were never completely satisfied with the physical setting of those relations and so were always in the midst of one improvement or another. A lack of complete satisfaction—or perhaps better put, a lack of complacency—compels continuous improvement. We spent hours at Mount Vernon and were blessed to enjoy beautiful, cool spring weather until the moment we began to head for our car, when the rain started to gently fall.

A funny thing happened to us on Saturday night. After we unpacked all of our things in our room at Motel 6 in Washington D.C., I (Michael) went to the bathroom to wash my hands as Sarah got Micah ready for bed. A few seconds after turning on the sink, I heard a spattering noise. I looked down at the ground and saw water splashing, and then gushing out from underneath the sink. Turning off the water and crouching down, I was greeted by a surprising sight: six inches of pipe was missing from the bathroom plumbing—just gone! It looked like the length of pipe had been sawed off. We put a few towels down to sop up the water, and I went down to the front desk to see whether we should try to get another room, or just get a refund and find another hotel. The attendant at the desk in essence told me that these things sometimes happen, which I'm sure they do—in former Soviet-bloc countries (and apparently Motel 6s). He was very nice though and found us a much better room, with fully intact plumbing, and we were eventually able to catch some Zs that night and had no further problems for the rest of our stay.

We attended church Sunday morning with our friends the Geigers in Falls Church, Virginia. Dave Geiger is a classmate of Michael's at HLS, and he and his wife, Liz, and son, Marcus, were in D.C. visiting Liz's sister. As our ward in Cambridge is essentially a student ward—the majority of members are in Boston to attend HBS, HLS, or Boston University—this ward in the D.C. area is a foreign service ward. The members attend for a few months in between their placements in U.S. embassies throughout the world. These foreign service members lead fascinating, difficult lives.

Sunday afternoon found us at the Washington D.C. Temple a few miles north of the city. The temple itself was closed for the Sabbath, but the visitors' center was open. One of the largest visitors' centers we have ever seen, its designers had clearly spared no expense. There were multimedia presentations on every gospel topic you could possibly imagine. A large room was devoted exclusively to the church's welfare program, with six television monitors playing, upon request, six different short videos showing the welfare principles of the church in action. And the temple itself is of course a beautiful, imposing structure, rising as it does above the Capital Beltway.

Monday was our first day of really exploring the city. We started with free cupcakes at Georgetown Cupcakes (made famous by TLC's "D.C. Cupcakes"). They were free because we were among the first 100 customers to request their "cupcake of the day," Chocolate Toffee Crunch, which they post on Facebook each morning. The clerk even gave a cupcake to Micah, who, being unfortunately too young to indulge in such sweets, was kind enough to share it with us.

After our delectable brunch, we headed over to the National Mall for a day at the museums (the weather was cold and wet, so we decided to spend Monday indoors and hopefully see the outdoor monuments on Tuesday). Our favorite of the Smithsonians was the Natural History Museum. Micah seemed to especially enjoy the dinosaur exhibit (maybe he'll grow up to be a paleontologist . . . or a tour guide at the Natural History Museum). We also spent an hour or so at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, where we were amazed to be once again reminded that man has enjoyed the epochal advantage of flight for little more than a century. It made us contemplate what the world would be like were teleportation—a similarly life-changing technology—to become a reality. Instantaneous transportation, if affordable, would be the ultimate bridge between cultures, nations, and peoples. And, significantly, we could live wherever we wanted and still face a negligible commute!

In the evening, we went to Outback Steakhouse (thanks to +Evelyn Robertson and +Rob Robertson, who provided the capital in the form of a gift card), where Micah had his first deep-fried taste of Outback's famous Bloomin' Onions (just kidding; he's still working on rice cereal and pureed sweet potatoes).

We were ecstatic (and incredibly blessed) to awake Tuesday morning to clear blue skies and May temperatures; we would finally be able to make it to the monuments and memorials—the attractions we most wanted to see. We spent the morning and early afternoon circumnavigating the Mall and strolling blithely from monument to monument. Michael has been to the Lincoln Memorial before, when Scott and Janelle were sealed in the Washington D.C. Temple in 2007, but he was again taken aback by its size and the spirit he felt there. What that monument represents is not just the life of a good man, but the intended sanctification of a nation, a nation desperately trying to extricate itself from the bonds of slavery—its great burden and shame of more than a century. 

In the mid-afternoon, we headed over to our last stop before heading home, the National Zoo, which Sarah had discovered was also free, and which hosted an exhibit of giant pandas! Sarah, who worked at a zoo in Minneapolis and so is an expert in the planning and design of zoological gardens, was impressed by the National Zoo's layout and exhibits. Micah loved watching the sea lions perform underwater back flips and other feats of aquatic athletics, and the lions and tigers were all awake and pacing aggressively throughout their large exhibits—something we've rarely seen at other zoos. The pandas were also fun to see, but, unfortunately, hadn't yet learned kung fu, and so spent most of their time in their father's restaurant eating noodles, puttering around the kitchen, and playing with action figures. Perhaps next time we visit, they'll put on a better show.

Congratulations to all who have made it through this post! We enjoyed our time in D.C. and also enjoyed telling you about it. May next year's spring break be just as fun!