HANGING OUT AT VIETNAM WALL in D C

This memory is of a very brief but touching time my son, Ben, and I had when we made our several thousand mile trip by Greyhound...all the way from Memphis to Portland Maine.  We made memorable stops at Niagara Falls, Boston, and Portland. But I want to tell you about the short time we spent at the Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC.

We were on our way back to Memphis. DC was our last major stop. Our bus arrived in Washington at daybreak. We ate a great breakfast at the bus station and then started out by foot in the direction someone at the station pointed out. It was a gloriously beautiful morning in mid March. We walked until we began to see the whitest white buildings we had ever seen. We found a little cafe and set up our personal headquarters..to get food or go to the bathroom off and on all day. Anyway, the White House was closed on Mondays...so we missed that but then we went into area with so many wonderful sites: the Washington Monument, the Abraham Lincoln statue. It became cloudy and there was a mist of rain just as our eyes caught the Vietnam Wall. I didn't personally know a single soul who was in that war. Yet my eyes welled with tears as we looked up and down the wall. We saw letters left under some of the names, little flowers. But what we remembered most was a young fellow dressed in mismatched army clothes kneeling at one spot. What was he feeling? Whatever it was broke my heart. Soon we walked on...explored as much as we were allowed in the Capitol Building.., the Smithsonian, outside of Supreme Court. We didn't realize we were tired until we had walked back to the bus station to board the bus for home. It was ALL so wonderful...but I kept seeing...and still thirty years later that Vietnam Veterans' Wall and the young man who knelt there in the misty rain.
just sayin' with love, annie in memphis