A Letter to My Child on the Election of Barack Obama

On November 5, 2008, as I drove from place to place to try to find newspapers which I would tuck away for my children to look at someday, I came to the realization that giving them the newspapers was only part of it. They could read the facts and see photos in their history textbook; what I really wanted to share with them was the way I felt and the things I was thinking about in the days leading up to and after the election of our first African American president, Barack Obama. I also realized that I should be doing this type of journaling with a lot of the things I witness. That way, when then ask me about these events, I can really give them insight into these events and not be overcome with amnesia.

For the sake of Ben, who will go into fits if he sees that I’m writing to our future children on the blog – No, we are not expecting. There are no definite plans for when we will start expanding our little family. This is simply a letter to capture a moment for our children, no matter when they decide to join us, and I thought I would share it with you.


November 5-11, 2008

To my child:

I have been to a lot of gas stations and bookstores this week. I’ve been collecting newspapers in the days after the election of our first African American president, Barack Obama. And even in these days of waning print news sales, this collection has not been an easy task. The day after the election, all the newspaper shelves at Barnes and Noble were empty. I went to a gas station up the street from the mall, and they only had a few copies of the Gazette left, everything else was gone. I went to pay to for my copy. I smiled at the cashier – there were a lot of people smiling at each other on November 5, 2008. The cashier was black and he had an accent which made me suspect his first language was not English. He shook his head, “It’s a historic day.” I said, “I know!” He said, “I never thought it would happen.” I said, “I wanted to get newspapers so I could show them to my children.” He said, “I know, everyone is. We sold out of all of those papers early this morning.” We wished each other a good day, both of us smiling from ear to ear, both knowing we were a part of this wonderful, proud moment in our country.

To sum up my experience of these November days – I cried. I cried a lot.

The 2008 election was a long one. There were a number of primary candidates, and because we live in Iowa, they were in our backyard as early as 20 months ago. On a bitterly cold night last January, Ben and I stood in a line that wrapped around the North Liberty Rec Center to get into our district’s democratic caucus. We both intended to support Bill Richardson; I also liked Barack Obama, but I felt Richardson’s international experience would make him a good candidate for the presidency. But when it was clear that Richardson was not a viable candidate in our district, I went over to Obama’s camp, and I have supported him for the past ten months.

He is intelligent, eloquent, and handsome and, truth be told, your mom has quite a crush on him. But what I admire most about him was his desire to unite the country, and I saw him as the best candidate to help us, as a nation, repair the damage of Bush administration. And for a large majority of the country that was what this election was about. It wasn’t about Mr. Obama’s race. And that, in itself, is something to celebrate.

Early in the morning on November 4, I couldn’t sleep. I was nervous about how the day would unfold. And at some point in that early morning as I searched for Obama videos on YouTube, it suddenly hit me – we were on the verge of sending the first African American man to the White House; it was just the past eight years that we were overturning but also hundreds and hundreds of years of injustice. That’s when I started crying.

I cried most of election day (and didn’t get any work done). I cried when I drove up to the rec center and saw how many cars were there and the diverse population of voters who were entering the doors. I started to tear up when I signed my name to receive my ballot and when I filled in that oblong circle. I cried when I listened to the iTunes mix I made titled “November 4, 2008.” Poor Sully worked overtime day. Every time I started crying he had to get up from his sunny napping spot to come comfort me by putting his head in my lap. He didn’t get much sleep that day.

Which leads us to election night. Oh, election night. Ben and I had gone to workout. I had calmed myself down and wasn’t crying every five minutes. I made Chicago style pizza for dinner since I couldn’t be in Grant Park where Obama would speak that night, and even though I didn’t know who Ben voted for, I figured he at least could get behind good pizza (and it was good!). The election results came in quickly – extremely quickly for two people whose only other presidential elections were 2000 and 2004. Ben and I were watching The Daily Show / Colbert Report live election special when CNN called the election for Obama on TV 2 (hopefully the concept of TV 2 is foreign to you; Ben promises me it will be). Ben just kept watching Stewart and Colbert, but when I couldn’t take it any more, I asked him to turn up the volume on the second TV. They were showing footage from across the country – people of all ages and races celebrating in Chicago, New York, and DC, Jesse Jackson sobbing in Grant Park, elderly civil rights leaders linked arm-in-arm singing “We Shall Overcome,” footage from Ebenezer Baptist Church. The news anchors seemed humbled and speechless in light of this historic moment, and I started sobbing. At this point, Ben turns to me and says, “Seriously? You’re crying about this?” I would duplicate the exchange that followed for you but it was not our finest hour and there were a lot of expletives on my part (I’m sure that I, your mother, have not said a curse word since you were born - *wink,wink*). Let’s put it this way, I listened to McCain’s concession speech on the radio upstairs while Ben watched the rest of the Daily Show downstairs. We were able to be in the same room to watch Obama’s beautiful acceptance speech. But there wasn’t a whole lot of “talking” going on between the two of us until the next night when Ben got home from the church. He, in true Ben style, tried to act like nothing happened. I was emotionally hung over and was not interested in ignoring the cloud that hung over us. He shifted his approach and sincerely apologized for what he said. He told me he also voted for Obama and that he, too, had great hope that this man could unite our country. And then he said something, something angry me almost didn’t let him get out; he said, “Look, I saw all those people celebrating what I thought was a clear victory, and all I could think was, ‘My God, all these people, all these celebrations…things are going to get out of hand, there might be riots.’ ”

Now part of this, as you probably know, is simply the nature of me and Ben. I am the idealist, and Ben is the cynic. But I couldn’t help but think, as I listened to him explain himself, that this suspicion is also a mark of our generation. We all became adults on a beautiful Tuesday morning when two towers fell from the sky. We look around at each other at vigils on the evening of September 11, 2001, certain only that war and more violence loomed in our future. We have put ourselves on a steady diet of satirical news programs in order to cope with the idea that our friends, family, and students were being shipped off to war, that our personal liberties were eroding, that we were being lied to and neglected by those who were to lead us, that our country’s international image was irrevocably tarnished, that our eco-systems were failing, and that greed had sent our economy into meltdown. And now we as a nation had stood for hope and change, but we still could hardly believe that it would not come with some sort of cost, some sort of tragedy waiting in the wings. I, myself, fear every day that Mr. Obama’s fate will be the same as so many other charismatic American leaders that called for change – Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy. I pray every day that he and his family will be protected.

I don’t know you yet. I don’t know your strengths, your weaknesses, your passions, your concerns. I don’t know whether you will be the same heritage as me and your father or if your narrative will begin with another family or in a place across the globe before we are blessed with the opportunity to know you and love you. But after the events of the past week, there is one thing I feel like I can tell you with great confidence: I know that you can be whatever you allow yourself to be. That if you trust in yourself, your family, your communities, and your god you can move mountains. I know that you can, in the words of Mother Teresa, accomplish “small things with great love” and that, over time, these small things will add up to tremendous deeds and you can slowly accomplish those things which seem impossible

This also, I know….I know that in October of 2008, after a year that was, at times, just too hard, Ben and I looked at each other and said, “How? How could we possibly bring any more children in this world? What kind of world would we be giving them? Would it even be fair to them?” But I know that early in the morning of November 4, as I started to realize that we, as a nation, were on the brink of bringing about this incredible and seemingly impossible thing, I knew in that moment that there was nothing I wanted more than to know you and to see the things your generation might accomplish. I wanted to fast forward to that moment where we will sit on the bed at the end of the day. I wanted to hold you close and smell the scent of your Johnson & Johnson shampoo. I wanted to talk to you about your day, your fears, and your dreams. I wanted to tell you about Novemeber 4, 2008 and everything I dreamed about, both for our country and for your future. I wanted to tell you it was a turning point, both for our nation and our family, because I knew in that moment that there was still hope and that I would gladly share this world with you so that you too could know the sweet taste of this hope.

I already love you, and I can’t wait to know you.

Love Always,
Mama