The river valley is brimming with life this month. After a dry spell, we have had all the rain April deprived us, packed into a few weeks in May. June is here, a time for celebration and remembrance. Reunions followed closely by graduations. Weddings, end-of-school parties, picnics, field trips and opening the summer cottage round out the month. Every year is different, and each is the same in the level of activity. There seems to be no value in preparing for the hubbub; it rolls in like the tide, no matter what.

My daughter’s Girl Scout troop went to Washington D.C. recently, on an end-of-year outing. As a troop leader, it was my duty to go along. My expectations of the trip did not approach joyful. With nine girls and their mothers to accommodate, all I could think of was the migraine I was likely to suffer from rising before dawn to get on the bus by 5:30 in the morning.

In spite of a bout with insomnia the night before we left, I rose without the predicted headache. My daughter, anxious with excitement, was waiting by the door at 5:00 a.m. sharp. Rather than the onerous chore I anticipated, the trip turned out to be near perfect. The girls were uniformed, as requested, and their mothers uttered no complaints about the food, bus or itinerary. This outing was bringing out the best in all of us.

Once in D.C., our tour guide was a woman, from Rye, NY, a Chicagoan by birth, named Willie, who carried a distinctive peacock-printed parasol, and was dressed in simple, elegant fashion, all black, except for a splash of colored silk at her neck. She was about 70, intelligent and cultured. We had been warned that the older tour guides were likely to be stern and impatient, but Willie suited us just fine. She was impressed by our girls and their knowledge of American history, as she quizzed them en route to the monuments.

Our scouts thought the highlight of the trip (besides the hotel pool) was Ford’s Theater. I enjoyed the house across the street, where Lincoln died. It is a dear little brick building, dwarfed by the newer architecture around it. The courtyard is shady and sported some of the same perennials I had just planted back home in Narrowsburg.

The Vietnam memorial wall has a new companion memorial, a bronze statue of three soldiers of the era. As we circled the statue what repelled me was the sense that it glorified war for children. I could imagine my young son looking at these haggard soldiers in their fatigues and dog tags, carrying automatic rifles and thinking, “Cool, that’s what I want to do.” Too young to know the fear in those eyes, he’d see the cover of manhood, and aspire to it. The wall, conversely, leaves you only with a terrible sense of waste and loss, of honorable men used dishonorably in a senseless cause. Is it any wonder that a woman designed this memorial?

Our last morning in Washington was spent in Arlington National Cemetery. It remains a lasting image, and inspired important dialogues about America’s challenge and responsibility that continues. At JFK’s gravesite, his words are engraved in an embrace of marble around the plaza in front of the eternal flame. It is the strength and vision of those words that moves me now, as the grief I once felt has faded.

There wasn’t time to find my father’s grave, among the thousands, but our visit brought back traces of memory from his funeral at Arlington. What I was wearing (the blue dress), the color guard of Marines, how the dew-wet grass had brushed against my stockinged feet and ankles, tickling them. D.C. in August was hot and humid. I had itched, I could not breathe. My head hurt. There were all those people, and the color guard, so perfect and young and beautiful. As taps played, I looked in their eyes. One of them seemed to be crying silently. His eyes were pools that never ran over, only brimmed.