inauguration day

Happy inauguration day, everyone! This is one of those days that will resonate in my heart forever and ever, watching my historic president stand up and say “Everywhere we look, there is work to be done,” and yet making me feel like that work is going to be done, and well, and that everything will be well and everyone will have unicorns and–and maybe I’m getting caught up, again, in that heady rush of excitement and optimism and hope that Obama–I almost wrote President Elect Obama, but I don’t have to anymore, do I, and that thought made me bounce in my chair and tear up a little bit. I had to blow my nose.

It is exactly that kind of day, today, where, I am a mess, and completely useless, but happy to be so, because it is inauguration day, and I believe in my president for the first time in so very, very long. It is such a strange and foreign concept, the idea that a political leader can be a figure of hope and a symbol of strength and even, very basically, not an embarrassment. Someone of whom to be so very proud.

Sorry, something in my eye.

This man, who is not perfect in any way, who maybe will struggle and suffer and fail and who may disappoint us horribly, is in for a lot of shit. He’s got us all waiting expectantly for our ponies and our universal health care and for him to come read us bedtime stories and pet our hair and tell us that everything will be okay and shut out the light and let us wake up into a brand new world where everything is perfect and it is okay to be a patriot, again, to not be embarrassed to say that you are proud of your country and glad to be an American and not wince when you see a car covered in American flag stickers. This is going to be a wonderful four years, I think, but also so very very difficult and terrifying, for everyone. A lot of breath holding, a lot of hoping, a lot of frustration.

He’s president, now, and what comes next? Everything comes next. Everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The difference is in the rolled-up sleeves and this sense that is palpable and real, of hope.