joy - pride - relief

The pen was a perfect wet marker. It glided smoothly and effortlessly. I wanted to savor the moment, and so I traced my already completed ovals one extra time for good measure. Walking out of the precinct, I felt an emotional wave of hope and happiness spread over my body. Locking eyes for a moment with another voter, I knew he felt it too. It was a sensation I had never felt before in all the years of casting my ballot. I was a part of something momentous - a shift - a current that would put things back on the right track.

Later that night when Ohio, who had been so wrong 4 years ago, gave their voice to change, I knew history was made. And to hear it be called - the election of Barack Obama as our 44th President. Speechless. It was a moment to weep and to be grateful this mutt of a nation pulled together and finally did good. Tears of joy and pride and relief. America is like little pieces of everyone - every race, every religion, every background, every economic status, every anything one can imagine; like those photos that look normal until you zoom way back and discovery it is actually made up up thousands of individual pictures. For us to overwhelmingly agree to put our trust and faith in Barack is beyond words. He has all the qualities to be a great leader and now he has the support of a nation.

I reached to call my Mother to celebrate, but was stopped short when I remembered she was gone. And then a huge smile overtook my sorrow. She always voted absentee ballot, and those were mailed out a long time ago. Perhaps she mailed it back before she fell; I do not remember seeing it in her papers. She was just shy of 91 -had grown into an enlightened human proud to mark her ballot for a black man. What an inspiration and role model!

I am filled with hope not just for my country, but for all the people of the world. This little blue dot is all we've got. There is a lot of work to be done. But now we have the one thing that had been missing - hope. Come January 20th, to crudely paraphrase Shakespeare 'the 8 long winters of our discontent' will be over. The chill will be around for a while but it's season is over. :)