I really didn’t think this would be quite what it is. I know it’s a big deal, of course, I am human and I am American, after all, but I didn’t realize this would be quite what it is. Majestic. Stirring. These are the times that I wish I’d someday have children, not because I covet your episiotomy, but because I want so much to tell them where I was WHEN.
What class I was in when the Challenger blew into a million pieces, where I was dining during the OJ verdict, the exact time on a Saturday morning my mother told me my father was gone.
I spoke to my mother after Obama’s speech. She thought it was wonderful. Groundbreaking and wonderful, she said, this woman born in 1941. She can’t wait to vote for him, despite the anticipated long lines and inevitable closeness of fellow voters in the elementary school heat. I asked her what it was like to witness this, if she ever thought she’d see a black man this close to The Highest Office.
“Of course I did,” she said.
Pause. I have to be honest. I didn’t think this would come first. I always thought about a female president — as a woman raised in the age of Sally Ride and Geraldine Ferraro and, Christ, Madonna. I always knew there would be a woman, know there will be a woman. But a black man? My mother was a high school student in the late 50s, a young married woman in 1964. My mother knew before I did.
“I wasn’t raised like that,” she said. “My world wasn’t segregated. There were always people of color at your grandfather’s store, friends of his and my mother’s. We didn’t care about those things. People were just people.”
Apparently I’m the last to learn on several fronts. I’m the one who thought this might very well be like most other elections, the choice between the lesser of the two evils to which many have become accustomed. No worthy fanfare and certainly no tears. Never crossed my mind that she and I would even talk about it, save in passing while en route to lunch.
I loved seeing this side of her, the woman with whom I talk about tea sandwiches and bra sales, about the everyday and much of the unremarkable. I loved learning what I didn’t know about this ridiculously small-town girl with a bigger world view. Thank my lucky stars.
18 Comments
and we, in turn are awed to know about the jucyfruits for dinner! What wine goes with them? You know, you had me @ merlot!
Christ wasn’t a woman.
;-)
I saw Jim Crow laws in the South numerous times as a kid. I never thought this day would come in this country.
Obama is the right person at the right time for this country; he will make an outstanding president and leader. We’re lucky to have a person of this caliber in the race.
Happily, I have never been to a bra sale, so you’re on your own there. :)
I live in the whitest part of the country imaginable. It embarrasses me for my neighbors that they truly think that Barack’s color or his ethnticity makes him somehow unable to lead.
To them I say, “Do you realize that he has the exact same, I mean, exact same resume as Abraham Lincoln. Both served one term in the Illinois legislature, then one terms as a Senator from Illinois before running for the presidency.?”
Now is the time. McCain announced his running mate today and the selection of this unknown woman is no doubt an attempt to make this campaign a historic one, too.
I think that if Barack is elected now, it is a great bonus that my two little white sons will grow up having never really lived in America before we had a black president. But, that’s just a bonus. That’s not why I want him to win. I want him to win because his policies just might save our country from bankruptcy in the face of 8 years of war debts accumulated by Bush. I want him to win because I desperately do not want my sons to pay a blood debt for greedy oil tycoons. I want him to win because I don’t want to have to take an extra mortgage on my home if my husband or I get cancer. I want him to win because I just don’t think I can take four more years of my civil liberties being eroded because, really, if you aren’t doing anything wrong, who cares if the government monitors your every move.
So, let’s kick some ass in November.
Yes Shonda, let’s kick some major ass in November!
I never thought I would see this day either. You are not alone!!! I guess I just under-estimate the people of this country…but I won’t believe it until I see him as president…
(i’m a very “I won’t believe it until I see it” person in general) :)
Thank your lucky stars, indeed.
I get how being a person of color or being female running for President or VP is a groundbreaking thing and yet, I don’t pick my candidate based on skin color or gender. It matters more to me what they stand for than anything else.
Your mom rocks!
I too, will be voting for Obama but in Utah it doesn’t count for much. Your mom, however, should have some impact.
I’ll just gloat the day after when I go to work. And thank people like your mom for getting the job done.
I hate to reuse the word HOPE, but I am so hopeful. Can you imagine the healing if Barack Obama is our next president?
That is absolutely a great way to see your mom. She sounds like a very cool lady!
I can’t talk about this election with either of my parents and only very tentatively with my sisters. My mom is a bit of a racist and my father (Yankee born of European immigrant parents) is more and more like that as he ages. My sisters don’t care about race or gender, but they both voted for Bush twice. So…needless to say that I have to keep my joy over Obama to myself. Or talk to my husband or my voting sons.
This is a very cool post. I liked it. You must have written it in a hotel room in Denver. Oh, yeah. I forgot.
Peace
hey. i live in africa. tanzania. i LOVE your blog. your writing. its awesome. and i LOVE it that obama’s going to win. he has to. and i think so does the rest of africa. i lost my mum when i was young. car accident. so this post was very poignant for me. i miss not having a ma. this would be the kind of thing we would talk about. LOVELY LOVELY. xx janelle
I’m one of the Gen Y weirdos who never thought we’d see a black president – probably because I grew up in Xenophobeville and there just weren’t any black people around, except the scary ones in the ghetto town far away. It just NEVER even occurred to me to think of a black man as president.
And now that it does and is a very real possibility, I feel bad for never thinking about it before. Was I perpetuating stereotypes or just living in a bubble?
Either way, I can picture it now. And I like what I see, because it means that maybe there’s hope for Xenophobeville after all.
Thanks for this post. November can’t come soon enough.
Nothing Gold Can Stay.
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Your gold comment reminded me of this poem.
I didn’t think this day would come so soon. And I was not a Barack supporter when he first announced he was running because I thought he was too wet behind the ears.
I have since changed my mind and I am 100% behind him. And it is awesome that I can sit down with my 85-year old grandmother and talk about a black man running for President. A man we both admire.