Monticello

I'm on a tear this summer trying to cram as many activities into the weekend as possible before Rachel starts Hebrew School again Sept. 27 and our family time is severely restricted because I work on Sundays from 3:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. The idea is to visit historical sites/do outdoor things like camping, boating, hiking, etc. before the summer is over (and before Rachel gets old enough to say that she really doesn't like being around us that much, although she insists she loves "family time," and, indeed, she seems to realize it's important).

So, last weekend was...Monticello! Rachel has been urging us to take her to see "Thomas Jefferson's Library," so off we went. Our tickets for the "family-friendly" house tour were at 11 a.m., meaning that we had to leave Arlington at 8 a.m. (at my insistence). We left at 8:15 and got there at 10:45, a half-hour later than Drew had assumed we'd arrived, because of traffic, a snack break and summer construction.

The tour, 40 minutes, really WAS family-friendly, with other smart kids chiming the answers to the tour guide's questions so much that she seemed a little nonplussed. Rachel's favorite room, of course, was Jefferson's "book room," which once held 5,000 volumes (he donated most of them to the Library of Congress) but she liked the "alcove bed" in his bedroom, too. Afterward she tried her hand at writing her name with a quill pen, then we took a shuttle bus to the cafe for a pretty good lunch. Then back to the house, where Rachel did more writing while Drew stayed with her and I took the "gardens and grounds" tour for 40 minutes, learning a lot about trees and flowers on the property and Jefferson's approach to agriculture. (Afterward I had Rachel look at the "sensitive plant" -- really, that is its name -- near the house; it looks like a miniature fern, and when you run your finger along the fronds, they close up; she was delighted.)

Then we all took the "slavery tour," and what an eye-opener it was: thoughtful, anguished, bringing out the real contradictions in Jefferson's character. At the end, the tour guide was telling us about Peter Fossett, the last remaining enslaved person at Monticello who died in 1900. Then the guide said that five years ago, a man in a tour group spoke up. "He was my great-uncle," he said. The guide for his group took a picture, which our tour guide showed us, and he said the guy had urged him, "Keep the stories alive." Whereupon a woman from Brazil in our tour group burst into tears because she was so overcome. I almost did so myself.

We decided to walk the mile back down to the visitor's center and stopped at Jefferson's grave. He has about 3,000 descendants, and the family maintains the grave (and any family member can be buried there; we saw a tombstone that listed the year of death as 1997). Sure wish one of us was eligible to be buried there!

Afterward we drove into Charlottesville and had a nice dinner at a restaurant along a pedestrian plaza, then ice cream a few doors down. Then back to our very modest hotel room, where we collapsed into bed at 10:30 and didn't get up the next morning until 9. Whew, what a day! So, so worth it.