Last week, I went back to one of my favorite places on earth: Colonial Williamsburg.
It sits right next to the campus of William & Mary, where I went to college. Which means I got to visit intentional nostalgia right alongside actual nostalgia. I drove by my old dorms, ate two of my three favorite sandwiches, and loitered in the building where I figured out I might be a half-decent writer.
I was there to visit my daughter, Abi, who had just 30 hours off from her summer job teaching Shakespeare at a nearby camp. I firmly believe that kids doing Shakespeare by day and playing Capture the Flag and chasing frogs by night needs to exist on the planet.
So does Colonial Williamsburg.
This year, thanks to a perk from our fancy hotel, we had tickets to the exhibits. Which meant we got to see the whole thing unfold not just as a town, but as a fully immersive piece of performance art. Everywhere we went, we were caught up in the same narrative arc: summer of 1775, just after the Gunpowder Incident. The governor had fled. The revolution was whispering louder. The streets were full of tension, rumor, and hints at revolution.
At the Palace, the rooms were in disarray—clothes tossed on beds, boots left behind. Down the street at the pub, landowners debated whether to stay loyal or go rogue. Scrappy militiamen complained about the lack of leadership. A young enslaved woman named Kate, after finishing her chores, ushered us into a back room and told us about a rumor she’d heard: that if she joined the British Army, she might gain her freedom.
Her voice was soft but resolute. I cried.
I cried because it was a good performance.
I cried because it was a real story.
I cried because the actress playing Kate would clock out at 5 p.m. and go home to her Williamsburg apartment and probably watch Love Island. And still…I believed her. I needed to.
We saw a newly freed man named James Lafayette speak in the same theater where I once watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail with my friend Lisa Koffler. He told us how he spied for the Colonial Army. How he took the name of the man who freed him. And when he declared, “Today is the first day of my freedom,” in the year 2025, we clapped like we were there in 1776.
And maybe we were.
Abi and I wandered a lot that day. It was her third, maybe fourth visit. As I told her stories, she filled in the details before I could finish them. It was hot—really hot—so we took a midday break to see the new Superman movie. It felt oddly grounding—watching a modern myth with my daughter after spending the day inside an old one. Later, at dinner, we tied oversized linens around our necks at a tavern to signal we were aristocracy, while listening to a guy play the lute. Because why not.
One highlight for me was watching the Fife and Drum Corps march down Duke of Gloucester Street in 90-degree heat. They looked proud. And they also looked like teenagers who would rather be in air conditioning, playing video games or hanging out by the pool. It brought me joy anyway.
Because they were holding something.
They were holding time.
I think places like this are necessary. Places that are stuck in time. College campuses. Summer camps. Colonial towns. Even Disneyland. Places that let you wander inside memory—or possibility. Places that give you a break from the algorithm.
History has its horrors. So does the present. But sometimes a good performance can open your eyes. Or your heart. Or your imagination.
As for me, I took (and take) great comfort in choosing to believe that I was actually eating Thomas Jefferson’s homemade ice cream in 2025. That the man in knickers and tricorn hat belonged in the same grocery store where I was buying pretzels and sodas for Abi to take back to camp. And that Tucker Hall still smells exactly the same as it did 1992…like old books, floor polish, and whatever made me believe I might one day write something worth reading.
Sometimes you need to escape in order to remember who you are.
So here’s to the ones holding time. Even when they’d rather be somewhere else.
Personally, I’m not sure I’d rather have been anywhere else.
Or with anyone else.
And now, I suppose, it’s time to return.
kZB
cute