After Katrina in 2005, I relocated to Capital Hill. Stayed in a back room with a spare mattress at a friend of a friend house. His name was Giles. Incredibly nice for Giles to have opened his house to me. He was a friend of my x-wife. That was never brought up. It had potential to have been uncomfortable, but he was busy working, but still aware. And me, I was busy trying to move all my servers to New York and get my world back online. We both had a bunch of ‘wires to untangle’. We both ran into each other at the right time every day. Dinner time. All good stories revolve around a good dinner.
We respected each other’s space. I respected his endurance to make it inside the Beltway. He never told me what was happening in his life until I heard that knock on the door.
Oh but this time it was just the downstairs neighbor waking me up that first morning. Mary (as I came to know her) was a tenant, but introduced herself as the one in charge of keeping things in order. With a Virginia Slim lit under the sheath of her steady hand she began watering the flowers while standing on the discolored front porch of the Brownstone in late summer looking at Maryland Street with all the passersby. “The flowers look great.” Mary exclaimed. “You should help fix this place up for Giles. I can introduce you to anyone in this neighborhood, but first, tell me how you can help us.”
I agreed and offered to help fix up the house while I was here. Before I knew it I had volunteered to paint the front porch. It took two weeks. That is how I met the entire neighborhood. This is how I found out about the Circle of Friends that live up on the Hill.