Family gatherings are seldom a sure thing. Oftentimes, someone isn’t feeling well. Sometimes they simply fail to show up. Or if they do, they’re in a bad mood. Or something else occurs that tends to spoil the occasion.

A trek that my wife Mary Pat Treuthart and I took last week first to Washington, D.C., and then New York for a family reunion was surprisingly, and happily, free of any such complications.

We have friends who live in the nation’s capital. So we wanted to see them, along with making sure that our Brooklyn-dwelling grandson, in his first visit, got to see at least some of what the district has to offer.

As fortune would have it, we arrived in D.C. during the Blossom Kite Festival. So after fighting the traffic and, eventually, finding a parking lot near the Salamander Hotel, we hiked the several blocks to the base of the Washington Monument.

We had already dropped off our grandson and son-in-law, so that they could toss a football. So it was at the monument, amid several thousand of our closest acquaintances, that we strived to find the boy and his father. The incessant drumming by the Japanese group performing didn’t help our communication any.

But we finally did connect (thank you, smart phones). And as we walked around, we were able to enjoy the sight of several hundred kites vying for space in the windy conditions, along with the city's trademark cherry blossoms.

One D.C. monument I always insist on visiting is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which for me is the only appropriate kind of war memorial: something that demands you to reject all notions of glory and mourn the sacrifices made by the many victims of war.

Afterward, we walked to the Lincoln Memorial and trekked up the 87 steps to the chamber. Inside, we bumped elbows with the tourist crowd just to get a view of the great man’s statue and the words that grace the wall behind him: “In this temple as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.”

The more ambitious members of our group then decided to take the long walk around the Tidal Basin to visit the Jefferson Memorial. The older two of us decided to hike back to where the car was parked. Or, rather, to the Starbucks near where our car was parked. Which was a prelude to our visit that night to visit friends, former Spokane residents, where we all enjoyed home-made pizzas.

It's difficult to fit in all that D.C. has offer in just a couple of days, although we did take a couple of long hikes in Rock Creek Park. And as we were trying to interest a boy about to turn 13, this fact limited our plans. But the next day we all took in the National Museum of African American History and Culture (a place that the governor of Florida likely doesn’t even admit exists).

And that night, in honor of our soon-to-be-teenager, we all attended an NBA game between the Washington Wizards and the Miami Heat, a game that featured former Gonzaga player Corey Kispert (playing for the Wizards) and former UCLA player Jaime Jaquez Jr. (playing for the Heat). Kispert scored 13 points, along with three assists and a pair of rebounds. Go Zags!

The following day, after our Brooklyn family departed for home, we stuck around to see other friends before taking the train north. Because we’ve visited New York any number of times since my daughter left Spokane to attend college there in 1997, we simply spent most of our time in Brooklyn relaxing and catching up.

We did enjoy the brisket sandwich that we ordered at Katz’s Delicatessen in the Dekalb Market Hall, almost as much as I did the almond croissant I purchased at Café d’Avignon.

We also took the opportunity to spend a couple of nights in Manhattan, staying at the historic Renwick Hotel, which sits within easy walking distance of both Grand Central Station and the apartment of another pair of longtime friends. With them, we took the subway to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where we toured a couple of the current exhibitions.

One was “Hidden Faces: Covered Portraits of the Renaissance,” which consists of a little-known aspect of Renaissance art, “multisided portraits in which the sitter’s likeness was concealed by a hinged or sliding cover, within a box, or by a dual-faced format.”

The other was “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism,” a collection of some 160 works of art, from paintings to photography and sculpture, that “explore the new Black cities that took shape in the 1920s–40s in New York City’s Harlem and nationwide in the early decades of the Great Migration.” (Again, not anything likely to be included in a Florida school curriculum.)

That night we enjoyed dinner at Pietro’s, a place that storied food critic once claimed served her “the best steak I’ve ever tasted.” We passed on the beef, opting for chicken parmigiana instead, which was tasty as well.

Maybe the high point of the trip came the next day when – after enjoying dinner at the Chinese restaurant Chef Yu – we attended the opening-night of a stage play written by former Gonzaga University School of Law graduate Tim Mulligan.

His play “Witchland” had been previously produced in San Diego and Palm Springs, but this was its New York premiere. And a full house, including several of Mulligan’s family and friends, enjoyed the show at the Chain Theatre. It’s a clever, and occasionally scary, blend of family dynamics and witchcraft, shaped around the history of Mulligan’s hometown, Richland, WA.

As one reviewer observed, “The play is, in its conception, frightening on several levels, least of all the historical fact that most of us are unaware of: an entire swath of the West was negatively affected by airborne plutonium waste resulting in cancer.”

The house lights coming up signaled that our short East Coast visit was coming to its end. Brief but teary goodbyes took place in the street before Mary Pat and I jumped in a cab and headed back to the Renwick. Our early-morning flight was looming, and our bed beckoned.

Some family reunions, however brief, go flawlessly. This was one.