Qmckenna’s Weblog

Mount Vernon April 6, 2010

Lila really enjoyed Mount Vernon. We were there the Saturday before Easter, a beautiful day, and it was very crowded. We reviewed the map–Lila honed in on the Tomb right away. But first  we waited in a long line to tour the mansion and Lila organized the kids on the lawn and started a game of freeze tag. She was very proud to have eluded a 10 year old.

The line moved at a decent pace and we succeeded in getting her to rejoin us just before we entered the house. To her credit, Lila is not shy about raising her hand and asking questions of the docents. Unfortunately, the Ladies of Mount Vernon see themselves as three-quarters security guard and one quarter information provider–they could easily be replaced with tape recorders. Lila asked an innocuous question on the ground floor which was dutifully answered with a tone clearly meant to suggest that if the little one had just paid better attention to the canned speech she would already know the answer.

On to the second floor, which ended with George and Martha Washington’s bedroom. The docent told us that the bed we see is “the very bed George Washington died in.” Lila’s hand shot up. The docent looked away. The hand wiggled.The docent saw it and asked if she had a question. Lila tried, but just couldn’t get the question out–too much pressure. So we left the house and Mary asked Lila what her question was. “If George Washington died in that bed, how did they wash the sheets?” Luckily the next building we approached was the laundry, and we were able to show her the pots and soap that would have been used.

If I recall correctly, Washington died of “complications” of a relatively minor respiratory infection. I think the complications were that his crack physicians bled him to death trying to get bad humors out of his body. So maybe she was right to be worried about the sheets.