The Smithsonian Castle building has been on the National Mall since 1855, and I had wanted to go there for about that long, I think. Back in the early 1970s, my Dad got a subscription to Smithsonian Magazine, thus beginning a long fascination with the place. Dad and I would get each month’s issue and pore over it like it was some kind of lost treasure, and it was. We discovered more about our nation’s history, art, and architecture than I had ever absorbed in my public education. And we would talk about how we were going to visit DC one day and go to the special Member’s section of the Castle, where we would feel we had a special place among the many visitors to the institution. It was a vision that we held on to even into my adulthood, though as Dad got older it gradually became apparent that it was a dream that would never be fulfilled. So when, 20 years after Dad’s passing, I finally walked on to the Smithsonian grounds and into the Castle, I brought my father’s memory with me. No one could understand why this, a brief visit to a museum, could be such an emotionally fraught moment, but it was overwhelming to me- I think I cried a little when I walked through those doors. But I still didn’t get to go to the Member’s area. Next time..