Southern Legitimacy Statement: I spent my early childhood in Washington, DC, where this mini-memoir takes place. That’s south of where I have lived for the past forty years, New York City. My current residence is in the southernmost metropolis of New York State.
Knowing Awe
I dropped my parents’ hands and ran up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Living in the nation’s capital, I had been here often, but this time was different. I paused to glance up at the imposing figure with the sad face and giant hands, and I shivered from something I had never felt in all my eight years: awe. I had heard the word but hadn’t totally understood it. Decades later I wonder if that moment, when I grasped both the meaning and the emotion of a word, helped shape my future and led me to become a writer.
