Places I’ve Called Home

October 28, 2015 / Kelsey Ryan / 1 Comment

To the places I’ve been lucky enough to call home, if even just for a few months:

Oh, how thankful I am for you.

Thank you for connections and reconnections, for a point of comparison, for all-embracing acceptance.

Thank you for grounding me. Thank you for warmth and love and foundation.

Thank you for growth, for seasons, for failure, for success.

Thank you for rivers and belltowers and history and ruins. Thank you for the joy of hard work with my hands.

Thank you for narrow paths, for independence, for reduction, for direction. Thank you for hard-won proof that I am getting there.

Thank you for opportunity, for expectations, for introductions.

Thank you for horizons of big possibilities, and greater things ahead, for stretching and stepping up, in all its forms. Thank you for daily surprises. Thank you for being home right now, for the foreseeable future.

With each move, I trade a bit of myself for each location I leave. And I’m better for it.

Sometimes: An Early Evening in Northwest DC

April 30, 2015 / Kelsey Ryan / Leave a comment

Sometimes, we don’t go for our nightly runs.

Sometimes, we decide that it’s pizza for dinner, and that we’ll fling the windows open and feel the breeze shake the trees.

Sometimes we’ll take a little walk, just to watch the evening descend. (And also to collect the pizza.)

And we’ll stumble onto a neighborhood pool, looking fresh as ANYTHING, and consider jumping in. Just for a second.

And we’ll find some flowers that are too cute for words, but that we’ll squeal about noisily.

And oh, Marilla.

And sometimes we wander along streets by embassies, and see black and red and blue and green shutters…And flowers, the kind you thought only existed in books and artwork…And SUNAnd the results of a neighborhood kid’s hours of adventures.

And then you walk home to pizza and breezes and beers and dusk.

Dear old world, you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.

Still Living Like a D.C. Tourist

April 13, 2015April 13, 2015 / Kelsey Ryan / Leave a comment

Like I’ve mentioned a few times now, it’s SPRING in D.C.

And you know what that means?

CHERRY BLOSSOMS.

For those of you who don’t know, the Cherry Blossoms are the Nation’s Capital’s biggest tourist trap. Right along the tidal basin in D.C., near all the monuments and the National Mall, rest hundreds of cherry trees, gifted to the U.S. by Japan. And each spring, these cherry trees bloom spectacularly, and every single tourist in D.C. loses their freaking mind.

This year, I got to play tourist in my own town (whoa, it’s my own town now!), and went down to the tidal basin after work with Bobby and Miriam. And man, despite the crowds, it was phenomenal.

Don’t let these images fool you; tourists were like gnats.

Looking up.

The Jefferson Memorial has never looked better.

And lucky for us, we managed to catch the blooms just as the sun was setting. Which led to some incredible footage:

And a fuzzy Jefferson Memorial, in the background of some very pink cherry blossoms.

As a D.C. resident, I know I’m really supposed to loathe tourists (and believe me, I often do).

But today, in the 70-degree sunshine and the falling petals and the mad dash across the highway to get to the tidal basin, I still felt like a tourist.

And you know what? That was okay with me. I’m not too used to D.C. that I’ve become immune to the excitement of the presidential motorcade. I still feel amazed by public transportation. I’m still thrilled by the wonderful woman who plays the trumpet for spare change at the metro stop in the mornings.

Now you won’t be watching me ride a segway or anything, but I’m pretty glad to be here just the same.

D.C., you’re all right.