Can I blame the kid on this one?
Indirectly yes, but I saw a sign that our moving would be inevitable. And that sign was our neighbor’s “For Sale” sign. Our beloved neighbors of over a decade are moving a few blocks over for more square footage. It wasn’t a nail in the coffin, but it is one of many things, many signs that point to our eventual move.
When? I’m guessing 2 to 6 years. It really depends on who replaces our neighbors and if my work relocates to the suburban campus.
That last part really annoys me. I remember Eleanor Holmes Norton saying she helped author some rule saying a percentage of federal jobs were supposed to stay in the District. For as long as I’ve been with my agency, most of the opportunities were out in the burbs. Since having a kid, I’m making more of an effort to go up one more GS level, and that means going out to the burbs.
Another thing, and I may explore this a bit more, I’d like to live a more Black middle class life. It was at my cousin’s wedding reception in upper PG maybe Howard Co., MD, with two beautiful words, “open bar.” Anyway, surrounded by other Black mostly educated professionals and retired professionals, I thought, this is nice. Problem, I really don’t get that living in Shaw. I do like living and being in integrated spaces. But now with my son, I’ve become extra sensitive to what impression the people in the neighborhood present. He sees the old guys on the corner, the homeless guys shuffling through and horseplaying juveniles more often than he sees the black church elders & deacons, and his retired (but very busy/active) relatives.
Shaw is diverse but the diversity is uneven. There just aren’t enough Black middle class families here. So when we talk about black white differences, it’s white rich/ black poor. It might be a different story in other neighborhoods with thicker pockets of the AfAm middle class.
In the meantime, I’m just loving the city. I’m loving the occasional peeks of the Capitol dome and the Washington Monument on my daily commute. I’m loving the fact that there is an awesome restaurant 2 blocks from my house and that most of what I need is within a 15 minute walk. Despite my complaints about 311 and various city services, I’m loving that there are apps and websites and a whole community of people here working towards making city government less sucky. Most of all, I’m loving the universal Pre-K, the one thing keeping me from going, “Let me put in a transfer to Burbsville and put the house on the market this Spring.”