Union Station is one of those grand front doors, a place that’s meant to be exited. Walk beneath the arched portico and glimpse the Capitol before you.

While your peripheral vision takes in the comings and goings of a bustling depot — the cab queue, the travelers with wheeled bags, the buses and cars heading around the drive — what you see first is the Capitol dome.

I was remembering yesterday the first time I walked out the doors of Union Station. I’d arrived from Kentucky with a bunch of other eighth-graders. Some of us were staying in D.C. and others were taking a bus to New York City.

I was in the latter group — by choice, I might add. Even then, the Big Apple beckoned. But when I walked out of Union Station and saw the Capitol, I had to catch my breath. There was the city’s icon visible within minutes of arrival. There was a place I’d seen pictures of in textbooks but never imagined seeing in real life.

Yesterday I walked by this spot again. I stopped and thought about the twists and turns and decisions that brought me here. What circuitous paths our lives take. Would we have it any other way?