For pretty much all of my life I have attended sciencey ceremonies here and there: to honour my father, or to hang out with a bunch of scientists at some faraway meeting, or to collect swizzle sticks from every adult in the St. Louis Marriott, bored and confused, while my parents socialized with the meteoritical or geophysical set.
But this time...this time we were going to meet, what, the president? And my long-lost cousin? And the guy that did the world's first liver transplant? And the guy that invented GPS? And the guy that invented the video game? Well, heck. I've taken advantage of a few of those technologies myself! (Though the cousin thing I'll admit I'm still new to, and the current president, well, I've been trying to cut down.)
So here are the details in a nutshell: I trained down to DC in the middle of the biggest snowstorm alive, arriving too late to do much but see my parents, eat some seafood, and watch Gray's Anatomy in the hotel with my mom. In the morning I found the nearest Starbucks, to the chagrin of my waiting mother, and got hopped up on coffee so that we could get on the "Awards Shuttle" (basically, a glorified short bus) to the White House. I ate half a banana waiting in the coat check line, and stuffed the unused half in my pocket, which I then checked. Classy, Liz. Very classy.
Inside the White House I bumped into my father, who was there already, hanging out with my cousin, whom I had never met before. They were amiably chatting and my cousin was doing a fine job of, well, doing his job, which was, conveniently enough, to handle my father for the day (and believe me, he's a handful.) My mom and I were quickly scuttled off with the rest of the plebes and my dad and the other scientists and technologicians got to have a little meet-n-greet with the prez. Everyone else went into what I think was the East Room (almost spelled that Eats, but there was no food in there, trust me) and waited for the ceremony. Bush came out. Mangled a speech. Made vague threats about making science and math "cool" again, with the same goals for "success" as they'd had with the No Child Left Behind Act. They read citations explaining what the medalists were winning medals for, and when they got to my dad's, the president exclaimed, "Hooo!" — in a tone indicating something like, "I don't know what the fuck any of that means! But it sounds hard!" Then he touched my father repeatedly and put a medal on him, and it was weird, and then the other medalists got touched, and the president ran away and then we ate cookies. George Lucas won an award (or, more specifically, accepted an award on behalf of Industrial Light and Magic) and even though I am the only freak in the world who didn't go see Star Wars as a child in the 70s and 80s (and 2000s...), I asked for a photo with him in hopes that I could up my geek credibility. He was civil about it, but I wouldn't say nice.
Which is really only fair since I'm not a true fan. But he looks shifty, right?
From there I went and spent the afternoon with my cousin. He was great. It was really funny and strange to meet someone so closely related to me, about my age, who I hadn't ever met. His manners were impeccable and made me ashamed of how many little social details I'm simply oblivious to — like when he fell into step politely with my mother if we were walking in a random alignment, and just, well, everything. Possibly a result of the military, but clearly not genetics, as there are so many things I just never think of. And yet, many other times, he would just say something so, not exactly blunt, but straight-shooting and realist-spoken that I thought, "Wow. You ARE related to me." And that was really cool.
In the evening we were entertained at the Ritz-Carlton at a fancy banquet dinner for which I had been shopping for the right clothes for a very long time. It was pleasant enough, paced well, the food was tasty (risotto! what a surprise!) and we were all given commemorative...notepads. How geek! Short videos were shown to commemorate (and explain) the achievements of all the winners. There's nothing quite like watching a video about the esoteric discoveries made by the IBM Whatzit Group and hearing a huge table cheering when it gets to part about when they invented the S-Class G Valve or whatever. So cute. The thing about being in a crowd like this is that not only is it wonderfully geeky, it's pretty mindblowing. You don't overhear "he got the Nobel Prize" — you overhear "he got his Nobel Prize". Because so many people there already have one!
And at the end of the night I screwed up my nerves and went over to Dr. Fancy Transplant and said my little thank-you-for-saving-the-life-of-someone-important-to-me speech, which I was glad I saved for later in the night when he was tired and busy and going home, because of course it was awkward, and of course I had to explain that that person was dead now, but I'm still glad I did it. It's not often you get to be in the room with your award-winning dad and your mom and your long-lost cousin and the guy who made Star Wars and all the other guys who made stuff and the guy who invented the thing that saved, for a time anyway, the life of your husband. After that I was very tired, then we saw some pandas, and I went back to New York, hung out for a few days, and caught a cold on the train home.
