LONDON: STOPOVER

 

After Korea, we moved to Woodbridge, Virginia where my father was hired to work at the State Department, and my mother finished her journalism degree at George Washington University. We had arrived just in time for the Watergate scandal in 1972, and coincidentally, my father got an assignment to work as a Regional Security Officer at the American Embassy in Lagos, Nigeria the same summer President Nixon resigned from office in 1974.  While Nixon left the White House for the last time in a military helicopter from the South lawn, giving the crowd his iconic wave, my father and our cat left for Africa. Mom and I traveled there separately, via London, where we toured the city for a few days. 

So by the end of August, Mom and I were sitting in a hotel dining room in London drinking tea and eating cakes. The dining room had high ceilings and a central fountain. We felt posh, even if our hotel room was small with period piece fixtures in the bathroom. At this time, I was four years old, almost five, and as I ate, I told my mother that I liked London very much and wanted to live there. My mother agreed. She said it appealed to her more than any place she had ever been. She felt at home. This was our first trip to Europe, but every time I've gone to London since, I feel like I've come home. Perhaps those feelings are remnants of the first time we were there.

I'm willing to bet my mother was relieved to be getting out of Washington, looking forward to another overseas adventure. She had been working as a journalist in D.C., had a Pentagon press pass, and met politicians like John McCain, Robert Byrd, and F. Edward Hébert of Louisiana who once showed her his special "New Orleans Room," which was a lighted closet lined with pictures of nudes. My mother joked that it looked like Bourbon Street, as she slowly backed out of the room. 

During our stay in London, we went to Hyde Park to watch the ducks swim in the Serpentine Lake, then walked along Rotten Row, and on down to Knightsbridge where we saw palace guards riding on horseback dressed in colorful uniforms. We went to Buckingham Palace, or as I called it the Queen's House...and the same queen is still there. 

We also made a stop at the American Embassy so my mother could cash a check, and as we were waiting for the elevator, I pointed to a large portrait of Ford on the wall, that had recently been hung, and said very loudly, "That's President Nixon!" The people standing around laughed. 

On our last day, we walked around Mayfair, Picadilly Circus, and Pall Mall, and sat in James Park for awhile. Mom and I happily took it all in. The next day, we would fly to Lagos, Nigeria, where we would live for two years.  

But we had no idea that our stopover in London was a respite. We had witnessed the resignation of a US  President, but in Nigeria, we were going to find ourselves caught up in a violent attempted coup that started with the assassination of their military dictator Gen. Murtala Mohammad. The two years in Lagos would prove to be very tumultuous.