The light wavered
This is no more than a recollection. It is not an expert recount of the nation’s politics. It is but a moment, now stuck in time. This was the day on January 6th, a year ago that something changed for this city, and indeed for the country.
We had known for some time that a protest was planned for that day and there were reports of thousands of people marching on the Capitol. It was also well known that the protestors were supporters of the President who would shortly be out of office. What might surprise many who know of my interest in politics and current affairs, is how singularly uninterested I was by this group of moronic malcontents whipped up by what the historian and Facebook letter writer, Heather Cox Richardson calls “the Big Lie.” The Big Lie is the patent falsehood that the election had been stolen from President Trump via widespread fraudulent votes and a corrupt election process, all of which, as we know now, are lies that have done immense damage to the nation and continues to undermine American democracy.
The pandemic, still in its destructive slant almost a year on, had cast a shadow over me for months. Keeping ourselves safe and procuring a vaccine against that scourge was foremost on my mind. On the other hand, the relief of knowing that a new administration could be trusted to turn this pandemic around had fired up such hope in me that I was almost willfully ignorant of what was transpiring just over a mile and half away from home. I didn’t want to think of anything else.
The first I heard of the violence unfolding was when I sauntered downstairs for a midday break and saw my husband’s knitted brow. Both my husband and I were working from home due to the pandemic, and still are truth be told. He looked up at my entrance and said, “It’s looking pretty hairy on the hill right now. Twitter’s going crazy!” Immediately, I turned to my social media to see that, indeed, violence was breaking out. He turned on the TV. The crazed mob was now past the barricades and inside the Capitol. The building was in lock down. Despite that, I mostly felt a mild concern and a whole lot of disgust at people so easily turned by cynical lies and fabrications.
I went back up after making appropriately sympathetic comments and sat at my desk. A small notification at the bottom right-hand corner of my computer screen was the first real moment of dread for me. It was the daycare, of course. The email was urgent, essentially commanding all parents to come pick up their kids within the hour. The situation on the Hill was deteriorating and even though the daycare was nowhere near the Capitol, it was proximate enough for the administrators to want to ensure the safety of its staff and charges. It did occur to me that this was no more than extreme and unreasonable caution, but I’ve lived long enough in DC to know that it’s a place of planned behavior, of protocols, good or bad, competent, or otherwise. This was clearly a disaster management plan kicking in.
As I grabbed a pair of warm boots, there arose an image unbidden; of bloodlust-driven and crazed individuals, waving MAGA banners and Trump signs, probably armed to the teeth, spilling out of the south end of the Capitol, wafting insanity, and weaving their way over to Eastern Market. What if they were hungry or thirsty? They had only to head down Pennsylvania Avenue our way to quench whatever need left unfulfilled from attempting to bring down the collective will of this nation. What if our town of progressives closed doors on them, turned them away? Would they get madder still? Would their inexorable march lead them all the way to our doorstep? Do rioters like to trudge a mile and half toward a still slightly polluted river? I’m not very familiar with MAGA mob behavior, so maybe?
We are only a 15 or so minute walk away from Eastern Market and the legislative buildings on the hill. Suddenly it all seemed too close for comfort. “You are scaring yourself for no reason,” I scolded as I walked the tiny distance to pick up our son. He was excited. Going home so soon! What luck. We kept up the same joyful chatter we always do at pickup and drop-off time. He told me about the friends he played with that day as I watched other anxious looking people with their kids. I wondered what they would tell them about today. Would they even tell them anything? What do you say to a three-year-old anyway? Nothing, my sensible brain told me. At least nothing for now. Maybe in a few years’ time, it will be the right moment to talk about treasonous activities.
The boy was plopped in front of a children’s show by the time I went back to work. At the very next online meeting, anxious colleagues started discussing the event unfolding at the Capitol. The message from management was that if we needed to finish up early, to do so. I couldn’t concentrate and frankly nothing seemed as important as the besieged Capitol, so I shut down my laptop. It had been a slow day anyway.
My husband was now beyond agitated. His handsome face was pale, and concern cast dark shadows under his eyes, the green of them standing out starkly. I had no doubt that he had been consuming every message and alert that came from Twitter and friends between work calls. My phone itself started blaring messages. My friend’s group was sharing concerns and observations and my anxiety grew apace with each mute shudder of the phone.
As evening dawned, we heard of shots fired, doors and barricades broken, flag poles wielded as weapons, the most common of men sauntering down hallways of power, disdainful of their history and prestige. We heard of cowering politicians; their names catcalled along with their death. Politicians, some of whom would go on to protect their side and later deny that there even had been an invasion, despite overwhelming real-time evidence to the contrary.
Well, what we didn’t hear was of the National Guard sent to protect the Capitol’s inmates. For that we waited hours. We didn’t know then of course that they had been held up for purely political reasons; we just wondered why a National Guard that came down like Thor’s hammer on peaceful protestors elsewhere in the city could not be roused to round up treasonous rioters illegally entering one of the nation’s most hallowed grounds, or why they couldn’t halt an insurrection. We looked at each other and said something to the effect, “Had they been African Americans or BLM…,” one of us paused, “Yeah” with a cynical, perhaps anguished laugh. We didn’t say out that part loud, the one about how such a hypothetical protest would likely end.
As the day progressed, tension grew in our house. However, I watched the news coverage with a surprising sense of calm inevitability, because we had been moving toward this moment for a while, even if I hadn’t been following it faithfully. But when Michael looked me dead in the eye and announced that he was going to get on his bike and ride out to the Capitol to see for himself, I wanted to scream. I think I spoke in measured tones to dissuade him. Or maybe not. But it took some back and forth, more cold scary minutes than I care to count to talk him out of it. I didn’t want anything to happen to him. Of course I didn’t trust the rioters nor did I trust the police or the National Guard that finally, shamefully arrived to do their job. I didn’t want my son to grow up fatherless. I hope those last words remained unsaid, but emotions had been so high I have no confidence that they were. You can sense my fear I think, dear reader, for I was in the very pit of it. If we had been a childless couple, I know, I just know, that nothing I said would have stopped him that day. Aaron Sorkin had brought him to DC with his idealized dreams of gentlemen politics, and the very reason for us being in this beloved city was being set fire to. He would have gone, and maybe I would have too.
And so, January 6th happened and that whole night neither of us slept much. The next day we took a walk to the Capitol as a family. Maybe it was a walk of solidarity with our city. Maybe it was morbid curiosity. Whatever it was, we walked down East Capitol Street to arrive behind the white rotunda already encased in her steel jail; the barriers were up but the place looked clean. Guards were posted every so little distance. I recall the helmets overshadowing their faces, their breath in slow puffs rising in the warmish sun, their fingers on brutal looking weapons, and their booted feet poised ready for something. Part of me wanted to call out and ask, where had they been yesterday? But no single individual there was responsible for the tardy response and didn’t deserve my heckling even if I had been capable of it. Unsurprisingly, quite a number of Hill residents had turned up to see the remnants of an attempted coup in our backyard. Some were braver than I. Their anger at the Guard was served out loudly as I filmed my surrounds. Little did we know then, but those barriers would stand for months to come, even though the Guards would leave sometime shortly afterwards.
I’ve often read in the comment sections on social media, seen commentators and politicians, and even heard from family members that DC is some sort of freakish, unnatural place. That it is a city of vice and corruption, not “real”, and seemingly incompatible with the rest of the country. People, according to them don’t really live in DC. And if they do, they must be mad. Real people live outside the beltway, apparently. They feel strongly that the residents of DC deserve all that befalls them; from lack of representation, interference in our politics and governance, to government shut downs and everything in between. I have always been amazed at such sentiments. I’ve in equal measure laughed at their ignorance, been offended, and insulted by their lack of imagination, and their meanness and callousness. People do live here. I live here. We live here. My friends live here. My husband’s family lives here. My colleagues live here. My son’s friends and classmates live here. Six hundred and eighty-nine thousand five hundred and forty-five (689,545) people, in fact, live here. That is according to the 2020 census. What happened on January 6th was more than an attack on the simplest notion of democracy. It was also an attack on our home. And it hurt us. Those barriers that were put up afterwards, they hurt us because of what they meant.
They were constant reminders of January 6th, of an attempted coup on America’s very soil. Reminders of liberty taken from us, the people of the neighborhood, and from the city itself. Reminders of simple pleasures and comforts taken away. Such as how the shortcut so many of us used to take around the Capitol to downtown DC was no longer open to us. How a popular running and biking route was stoppered. No longer was it a playground for our kids when DC’s wintery obsession with snow was answered one day, and the kid’s couldn’t sled down the hill as they always have. Nor would those barriers accommodate any afternoon walks, any pauses to take in the sight of the statuesque pillars propping up our nation’s foremost democratic institutions. In fact, those barriers would make a stolid ring around the entire compound, standing bullishly against the city’s people and it’s visitors, shutting all of us out because of the Big Lie.
The barriers are gone now. The wrath of too many people combined with the persistence of DC’s only representative bore down on Capitol authorities. After weeks and then months of petitioning, heated back and forth between the Mayor’s and the representative’s offices and the Capitol police, of newspaper articles, of haranguing in traditional and social media, the barriers finally came down. The building was given back to us to look at and to enjoy again. But then, dear reader, we’ve always known, haven’t we? It won’t be steel barriers that’ll protect us against the next insurrection or the next attack on democracy.
The story of what happens to January 6th insurrectionists and their enablers is still unfolding, and for some the noose has already tightened. Justice in some form will be meted out but will probably fall below our expectations of what these people truly deserve. No matter. January 6th happened. It happened in my neighborhood. Since then, my child has started PreK at a school that’s uncomfortably close to the Capitol. That he spends his days so near that place of infamy is a constant source of anxiety to me. I wrote this piece because I was trying to make sense of the insurrection just as the new year dawned and its anniversary loomed over the city, and as our son prepares to return to school. How will we remember that day? After 3 pages of my recollections and feelings during that mad time, I am truly and sadly no closer to making any sense of it.
I will always remember it, though, as the day the light on the hill wavered, dimmed a little. It burns again today because we willed it. May it always.
