The woman I met today said she wrote a blog and I said I did, too, or, rather I used to but I’m not sure I do anymore. It’s been so long. But maybe I can try not to be embarrassed or reach for explanations but just say I’m here again: so hello.
The woman I met today was, as I was, looking at the Dorothea Lange exhibit at the National Gallery in Washington. I was in the last room of the exhibit and, prolonging the moment of finishing, looped back a room to find Dr. D. talking to someone. And as I got closer I realized he wasn’t talking to her, but, rather, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. He was just at “under God with liberty and justice for all.” Oops, I said, you forgot “indivisible.” (An understandable omission at this moment in time, but whatever.)
And I met the woman he was talking to, who was visiting from Saudi Arabia, where she writes, among other things, a blog. As I have written, among other things. They had stood in front of a photograph of children crowded together, hands over their hearts. Japanese-American children pledging their allegiance to a country about to scoop them up and send them to internment camps. And the woman had asked Dr. D. what the Pledge of Allegiance was and he was reciting it for her.
And so we met and stopped to talk in front of these iconic gelatin silver prints, these clear visions of a country living through the 20th century. She and I exchanged contact information and I’ve just looked at her beautiful blog. To leave a comment I had to choose the “translate into English” option which let me write left to right, but then if I wanted to change something, added it right to left, a reminder of how intentional we need to be sometimes if we want to communicate.
Maybe Dorothea would have enjoyed seeing this small moment she inspired.