A very Fabulous First Friday

 

I. As we approach the outskirts of Gettysburg, Kyle and I notice a subtle change in the landscape. Along Baltimore Pike things feel more rural, a bit like we’re going back in time. Not exactly to the period of the Civil War – since there are restaurants and our brief home away from home – a Comfort Suites – along the road, but no longer fully Today either.

After his joyful surprise of getting to ride in the front seat for the first time (for the 2.5 hour drive) and playing Infinity Blade for much of the way, when we walk in to the hotel lobby he says – a bit to himself – “I don’t think my honey bunnies know where we are.” Later he pulled them out to lay them on the bed to make sure they are comfortable.

To Kyle’s delight, there are goldfish in a waterfall in the lobby of the hotel and to my delight we have a couch area in our room – but the biggest delight is that it’s just Kyle and Papi for our first Fabulous First Friday. We’ve done other Friday’s before, but Heather thought of this and supported making it happen – that we would embark on a series of very special, overnight First Friday’s for our children. This is a great start.

I don’t think the hotel clerk’s recommendation for the Irish Pub is the right place for my 9-year old although its reputation as a great steak place and Kyle’s love of a NY Strip almost change my mind. Instead, after a quick online search, I find a place much better for us.

When you know someone obsessed with Civil Rights, macro level conflict, the history of slavery in the US and Haiti and the Civil War, you would be remiss if you skipped having dinner in a restaurant that also has a mini-museum with an actual station on the Underground Railroad. We go to the Dobbin House in town.

There is something special about being in the same physical space that has been used for hundreds of years by people for public gathering and dining. There is a certain ethereal sense of things looking out from the front door and knowing that in 1863 there were hundreds of field tents across the street housing the wounded from the day’s fighting. And that there were runaway slaves hid between the floor and ceiling of the second floor. And how my son sees that.

But there is something truly magical about having dinner and that same Civil War, Civil Rights obsessing guy wanting to sit on your side of the table on the bench with you and talk and talk and talk. Magical and wonderful.

That and while we’re waiting for 30 min for a seat, we do whatever he wants. We walk around the outside of the house a few times. We use my phone to take a compass bearing on where the archeology dig was done in the 1990’s, we visit the gift shop and decide there is nothing there of any value, we visit the underground railroad station – again.

Although dinner is not excellent, the experience is and we walk out very happy. Amazingly, as we’re pulling away from the tavern, Kyle spies the store where we had bought his toy Civil War Soldiers this summer – of course we have to stop. Kyle is in heaven. The only thing better would have been if they also had space men – but this is a shop just for toy soldiers. We augment his collection a little – but mainly just that I was willing to turn around and go in there at 8:45 after a dinner just for him at a restaurant just for him, in a town just for him in a First Friday just for him – that is most important.

We take a quick dip in the very cold hotel pool, but mostly we play Infinity Blade together until it’s 10 – incredibly late. But – there’s a fireworks show outside we see through the trees – turns out it’s a tribute to the Medal of Honor recipients in the park.

Back in the room. No, he doesn’t have to shower now to get the chlorine off (mommy will be so mad, but oh well), but yes he will have to in the morning. Prayers, lights out, I read for a couple minutes; everything is all done.

We have fully arrived at Gettysburg and left the rest of the world behind.

II. The Gettysburg visitor center opens at 8 – an hour earlier than our Licensed Battlefield guided tour starts, but since breakfast of little hotel waffles was at 7, we get tickets to the first Cyclorama show of the day. We stand inline among the cannons, bugles and rifles. The show is outstanding – the movie, the 360 degree painting and narrative. Kyle stands mesmerized as we hear called out the names of major portions of the battle – the Copse of Trees, the Angle, and others. And in an incredibly unusual moment for Kyle, he asks no questions. He just takes it all in.

Clay, our white haired field guide who grew up in Gettysburg tells Kyle he thinks that the Civil War is a great hobby for him to have – that it kept him out of trouble as a teen ager and will do the same for Kyle. This goes over Kyle’s head, but the sense of how much Clay loves studying the battle of Gettysburg does not. Clay drives our car and pitch-perfect nails the tone for Kyle for the day. Where do we want to go? Pickett’s Charge, Little Round-Top and Culp’s Hill.

If you’re not familiar with these skirmishes, it’s ok – I wasn’t either. Not until I had to be to keep up with Kyle’s growing Civil War knowledge. Maybe it’s the “Civil War Day by Day Book” he reads regularly, but he has a staggering amount of Civil War information for a 9 year old; in my not-so-knowledgeable opinion anyway.

Our guide has forgotten more about the Gettysburg battle than I will ever know. For him, it’s not just the town that’s a living little world, the day by day blow is almost as present as the Kentucky Fried Chicken we drive by during the description of the first day of the battle. We see a shell stuck in a building. We see bullet holes in a store where a Confederate sniper was holing up. We find out that 90% of the houses in Gettysburg were used as Field Hospitals and that current residents are strongly discouraged from sanding the floors or painting the walls since there are still blood and carvings throughout. We find out there the town had a population of 2,400, but were almost 200,000 soldiers around during the battle.

I worry that is all too much for Kyle, for any 9-year-old, but he takes it in, engaged, the gears working in his mind. We go through the seminary and see a line of US Army soldiers doing a battlefield study – albeit a very different one that we are.

We arrive at Pickett’s charge. We stop and get out. We look across the field where Lee sent 12,500 men into raging gunfire. Being in that field makes it much more real. Seeing how far these young men ran – mostly to their deaths – is not lost on us. The seriousness, scale and intensity is not lost on us.

Then something really amazing happens. We’re driving along, awash in the generals, and commanders and the 1,300 monuments and plaques and the charges and retreats and hills and high-ground and Kyle has an observation. “So, basically, the Confederates lost because the Union had a stronger defense.”

We have not discussed this idea at all. The guide has not hinted or offered up this theory in any way. Kyle has listened, asked questions and distilled the entire battle outcome to that one simple statement. I am not sure who is more dumbfounded, me or the guide, but we both kind of laugh out of surprise and just say yes.

After we wrap up our tour and visit the amazing museum that goes through things in even more depth, it’s clear our time at Gettysburg is ending. We sit outside on a stone wall, Kyle playing with the gift spyglass he picked out and I say “so, I think we’ve done everything we can today, it’s probably time to go home.

It’s one of those moments you’ll never forget. When you realize how wonderful of a time you’ve had with one of your kids and you have to return to reality. We hug and get in the car.

A very Fabulous First Friday.