George

As I child I was obsessed with George Washington.  As soon as I could speak I badgered my mother about her relationship with the country's first president.  I was adamant she knew him, and was by his side during historic moments witnessing America's birth.  My mother's lighthearted, practical response, "sweetheart, I'm too young to have known George Washington", threw me into a tailspin.  Time, and therefore this explanation, didn't make sense to my developing brain.  My mother, exasperated by my unwavering conviction, finally gave in and admitted she was nearby when GW cut down the infamous cherry tree.  As I got older I accepted the implausibility of my mother being alive two centuries earlier, however my fixation with this period in history remained.  My parents, indulging my passion, took me to a myriad of historical inns and houses where Washington had been rumored to sleep.  In the 1970s on the eastern seaboard colonial restoration villages were as plentiful as amusement parks.  My favorite weekends were those spent on cobblestone streets, watching women in long hoop skirts and bonnets churn butter while muskets popped from a reenactment skirmish in the distance.  My heart would swell with patriotic pride.  Those suburban pilgrimages were my way of saying thank you to the young men whose blood nourished the soil on which our country was built.  I still think about George Washington although the scenario is different.  I picture him coming back to the nation he founded and scratching his itchy wig in bewilderment.  This can't possibly be what he had envisioned two hundred and thirty four years ago.