Waking Up

Last night, when the horns and screams overwhelmed the barriers of my city windows and I finally tore myself away from the television, I went downstairs to see what was going on, and caught sight of something I’d never quite seen before, my children.

I had my twins after 9/11. It seemed an incredibly selfish thing to do - to actively seek to bring children into a world I no longer trusted. The notion that I was ever safe or secure was always an illusion, but it was a pretty convincing one for someone with no personal memory of the war in Vietnam and no first-hand experience living in a nation at war until Desert Storm. For almost six years now, I have been raising children under the surreal haze of George Bush. I have been trying to nurture values of honesty, kindness, open-mindedness and fairness. I have placed a premium on creativity, cooperation, thoughtful behavior and the ability to listen. I have tried desperately to maintain my own sense of hope, faith and dignity. To do this, has basically required a complete disassociation from reality. Until last night.

When Barak Obama was declared the president-elect of the United States, a friend who was watching with me said, “I feel like I’m waking up from a dream.” And so it was. When I opened the front door for the first time, at 12:00 am, I was in my pajamas. My neighbor screamed to me from across the street and I went running into the road, barefoot, to hug her. When I opened the door a second time, at 1:00 am, I saw things I’ve never seen before. The most incredible sight was a group of young, african-american women shouting with glee, and giving the thumbs up to an officer inside a police car who was leaning out the window to return the elated gesture. Both parties were laughing, with cell-phones clicking to capture the moment.

This desire to be outside and to find a way to express the overwhelming emotion of having elected Obama president, was responsible for the curious site, a block away, of crowds gathered on four corners of a busy intersection with no purpose, it seemed, but to cheer and take pictures of one another. Countless automobiles, taxis, garbage trucks and police cars drove by honking their horns and everyone roared some more. My husband said it was as if we all needed to go outside and howl at the moon.

That is why my sleeping children looked so very different to me when I descended the staircase. I had put them to bed in one world, but I knew they were going to wake up in another. The haze had lifted. The world looked much more like the one I had hoped to bring them into: a complete mess, yes, but a place I wanted to live in.