By now it’s old news that most of the Officer’s (Admiral’s) Row houses will be demolished starting on Monday.  Despite the fact that I’d known this was inevitable – and coming down the pike soon – the news last week hit me like a ton of bricks.  Oddly, I’ve had a lot of trouble finding the written words for how I feel, and perhaps this is compounded by our two-year-old who seems to have found her inner toddler and has spent the past four days whining non-stop and requiring constant intervention.

We stopped by Officer’s Row this afternoon to pay our final respects and let E explore a bit.  We’ve taken her before but this was the first time that she understood there there were no people in the buildings and what it meant for something to be “knocked down” (“Like Legos, Mommy?”).  There was something strange about watching our daughter peer between the bars of the fence, as if it highlighted, then amplified the passage of time.  My heart ached at the thought of the houses’ fate, but also at the thought that my daughter would never remember this piece of history except through photographs.

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In other, semi-related news, we need to migrate servers on the Officer’s Row Project site.  It might be down briefly, though not until later this week.