la Matriarch

I’ve been trying for the past several days to come up with a way to express my feelings about the celebration at Grant Park on election night.  I’ve been more overcome with emotion and elation than any other time in my life and my thoughts are just too jumbled to make any sense of.   For my own selfish reasons, I need to be able to get the experience out in some form that I can read, share, store.  Piece by piece, maybe…

We’d secured tickets to the event and had been told that the gates to Grant Park would be open to ticket holders at 8:30 pm and that there’d be another area for people without tickets right next to Grant Park where they could gather to watch Barack’s speech on the giant TV screens. 

I’d been glued to the TV all day long and after I found the live streaming video of the people lining up to attend the rally, I hardly left my laptop.  We’d have headed down there earlier, except I had a board meeting to attend at 7:00. 

We drove downtown around 8:00 and parked at my job and took a cab over to the entrance of the rally at Congress and Michigan and as soon as we got in the cab my guy yells to the cab driver “TAKE ME TO SEE BARACK!”  If you knew him, you’d know how strange that is.  He’s extremely shy and laid back.  He hardly ever speaks in public and quite frankly I started wondering if he’d completely flip out at this event and cause me to miss it in order to take him to the crazy hospital.

Driving downtown and then later in the cab, I was surprised how deserted the streets of downtown Chicago were but once we started to approach the Grant Park area, I realized that all the people were concentrated in this small area.  That’s when I started to get nervous.  I don’t do well with crowds and looking around at all the people at heightened states of this and that, I could see the potential for disaster. 

As we stood waiting to cross the street to get to the ticket holder’s line, I was already becoming annoyed by the rowdy drunk guys behind us, smoking swearing and stinking of beer.  I wanted to be OK with them just having fun celebrating this historic event but the truth is that I considered it a very serious matter, one that deserved a night of sober. 

I nearly died when I saw the line for ticket-holders that stretched down Michigan Ave as far as I could see.  We walked all the way from Congress to Roosevelt (5 blocks, I think) only to see that the line had snaked around and down Roosevelt Ave.  We were feeling very defeated since it seemed there’d be no way we could make it through the line and into the park before Barack’s speech.  Then something crazy happened.  I think the Chicago Police just got sick of it all and on a whim they opened a blocked side entrance to the park and started telling us all to go.  “The lines are too long, just go, go!”  We all poured in and I’ll never forget my guy saying “this is where the stampede happens.” 

We walked as fast as we could, past drunk girls complaining about us skipping them, not even knowing where the end of the line was.  As we walked, I kept looking at the long line to my left, the ticket holder’s we’d just passed patiently waiting their turn to enter the park - they’d probably never make it in.  We weren’t that far from them but the path we were walking down was lined with beautiful trees so they didn’t see us or there might have been some kinda riot when they realized they’d waited for hours for something we’d hardly waited for, at all. 

Ultimately we ended up at the very front of the line in the corner where they’d stationed another ticket-taker between the wall and a big ass garbage can.  We were packed together to a level that nearly sent me into a full-blown panic attack.  It was one of those times where you know that something small could happen to excite the crowd into a panic and you’d end up on the ground fighting for your life while people trampled you.  As we stood there, waiting, inching forward, I could feel the breath of strangers on my neck, I could hear whispers not meant for me to hear, I could smell what they’d eaten and drank.  It was hard to find a way to position my head so that I could inhale anything but other peoples exhales.  That was an awful moment.

We eventually made it through and I’ve never felt such freedom as I did when we passed the entrance and I was able to walk with some space on either side of me and breath the fresh, cool air. 

When we entered the park there was a sea of people already there watching the Jumbotron but we found a spot over by the east fence so that at least one side of us would not be packed with people, and we waited, and watched.  First they announced that we’d won Virginia, then Pennsylvania, and before long that feeling that we’d be winners that night came to settle in my mind and for the remainder of the night I fought back tears. 

Only a minute or so after the polls closed on the west coast, the screen shined bright, “Barack Obama has won the Presidential Election.”  The crowd erupted and we began sobbing.  I looked around me into a sea of diversity all crying together about whatever  singular thing this meant to each of us.  Old black men who I imagine never thought they’d live to see this day, Muslim women in hijabs probably envisioning less harassment in this country after today and white people just like me who, even though we don’t experience racism like the others, totally get it.

During John McCain’s concession speech, I felt sad for for him.  He is the ultimate patriot, with real battle scars to show.  I thought he was humble and gracious and it saddened me to see him realize that this lifelong dream of his might not ever happen.  I was proud of the way that he hushed the booing crowd and wondered if on that day he was ashamed of them. 

I was mesmerized by Barack’s speech.  I especially loved how he spoke to the folks that did not vote for him and even as I think of his words today, nearly a week later, it makes me emotional.  “I hear your voices, and I’ll be your President, too.”

Most of all I was absorbed in the reaction of my boyfriend, a young African American man who I’ve spent years trying to support through times he’s been unjustly stereotyped and alienated because of the color of his skin.  Before this night he felt he lived in a world of fear and pain to the extent that it prevented him from even considering bringing a baby into it, one of the most basic human functions.  But as I watched the tears run down his face, I could see many of those bad memories, feelings, philosophies leaving him, and I was overcome with the thought of how this monumental event will personally effect my life, and his. 

I have never been a patriot.  As long as I can remember, I’ve been ashamed of the history of my country, the genocide, the enslavement of the past and the general I’m-better-than-you attitude of the present.  In Grant Park on election night, that all went away.  For the first time in my life, I’m proud of my country and I’m optomistic about the future. 

Thank you, America.

More Wordless Wednesday

Wow - is that a title straight out of 4th grade or what?  Clever titles are more trouble than they are worth, sometimes.

I’ve tried to stay away from blogging about politics but if you’ve read much of my stuff and somebody were holding a gun to your head demanding you tell them who I’ll be voting for, you’d guess right (correct). 

It’s easy to sit around and argue the standard platform differences between Republicans and Democrats but at the end of the day, we stand where we stand.  Who cares.  And, it would be easy for me to sit here lecturing you about how pro-choice is the way to go, and how fucked up my womb will be should a Republican get elected, but last time I checked there’s a Republican in office for 8 years, and my womb is just fine.  

Here’s the bottom line.  I want to live in a country that I’m proud of.  I don’t want the world to see us as big mean bullies but today, that’s our reality.  I don’t want to sit here year after year watching some war that, at this point, I doubt makes sense to anybody (surely not me).  And although I know this is crybaby-crazy-talk, I’d like to be able to take every dollar of my money that’s been spent funding that war and give it to my future father-in-law who has no health insurance and a shiny new lung cancer diagnosis. 

I don’t want to be thinking the shit I’ve been thinking all week about how all great nations eventually fall and wondering if this economic crisis we’re in is the start of our fall.  I’m tired of hearing about white supremacists who we dismiss as radicals on the fringes of society but whose core beliefs we share but are unable to recognize (or admit), and hate crimes and stereotyping and restricting of rights and freedom of speech and freedom and freedom and freedom all at the same time.  It seems like we’re always going around declaring how great and free we are but we’re not really walking the walk.  Feel me?

The reason I’m so excited about this election is that it’s the first time in my life that I think we are at a point where we could really move beyond it all.  And no, I don’t have delusions of grandeur brought on by the media and great marketing.  I’m not like that.  I’m an intelligent woman - I don’t establish my beliefs and values based on what reporters think and write.  It’s something inside of me.  It’s that this is it feeling (probably the same feeling that sends you into a panic if you’re on the other side because it really does mean the kind of change that’ll make your skin crawl). 

In Eckart Tolle’s book A New Earth, he says we (the country, the world, the planet) need to “evolve, or die.”  That’s where we’re at, people.  Evolve, or die.  It’s really important that we get this one right. 

Years ago, after a year of being inseparable friends, my guy and I decided to give a relationship a try.  I was terrified and excited all at the same time.  I remember telling him “this is either going to be really really good or really really bad and I’m not all that sure which it’ll be but I am very sure that things will never be the same between us after this.  We can never go back.”  That’s exactly how I feel about this election.  It’s going to change the world - I’m sure of it.  I’m just hoping that, like my relationship did, this election goes my way.

More Wordless Wednesday

I’ve broken my right arm twice in my lifetime. 

Once when I was about 10 years old, all the “big kids” in our neighborhood built a wood platform at the top of a huge tree in the backyard of Timmy and Tammy’s, the twins house we hung out at.  Tied to a branch way above the platform was a real long rope that hung from that tip-top branch, to the ground below.  The game was to stand on the platform in the tree (which seemed about 50 feet off the ground to fradycats like me but was probably really only 15-20 feet from the ground) and grab hold of the rope.  The person at the bottom of the tree grabbed the end of the rope and yanked it away from the tree as far as they could run with it which swung the person hanging on to the rope way out into mid air.  The person dangling from the rope hung on having the time of their life until time to be returned to the platform where they’d eagerly await their next turn.  Well, that’s how the Evil Knievel kids did it.  I, on the other hand, can hardly walk down the stairs of my porch without busting my ass, so this pseudo bungy tree trick was really hard for me. 

I stood on the platform scared to death until all the other children had taken their turns and I could no longer stand the torment I was getting from being such a chicken-shit.  I held the rope as tight as I could and was swung out gracefully over the grass.  It felt wonderful and I really thought I was hot-shit.  I’m not sure if I lost my grip or just forgot to keep holding on, but I fell 15-20 (or 50) feet, landing immediately on my right arm.  I can’t describe the way my dangling broke arm looked but it was fucking gross and freaked me out and I ran for my life, all the way home, leaving behind all my Evil Knievel friends.  I wore a cast for 6 weeks.

A couple years after the Tarzan tree debacle, I was out in the front yard of another friend’s house and we were doing basic cart wheels thinking we were rock stars.  Deciding we needed more of a challenge, my friend placed a short box on the ground that we were to do cart wheels over.  It was sort of like an obstacle course for rock star dummies.  My friend breezed through her cart-wheel-over-the-box but when my right arm hit the ground just beyond the box, it snapped and I collapsed to the ground.  I wore that cast for 6 weeks, too. 

Both times my arm was in a cast, the cast was removed by my father, with a small hand saw.  I was terrified that he’d saw my arm off but both times he sawed through my graffiti’d cast with the carefulness of a brain-surgeon, the blade never touching my arm. 

All these years I’ve always thought that my dad sawed off my cast because he’s a big ole redneck who liked to scare the crap outta me.  But, sometime during the presidential debate on Wednesday night it hit me that my parents probably never had health insurance the entire time I was growing up.  During that time period, my father was a painter and a roofer, working whatever jobs he could find to pay the bills and support his family of 5.  My mother, a stay-at-home mom. 

In hindsight, I’m pretty sure my father would have preferred that my casts be removed by a professional, in a real doctors office, with an instrument designed for cutting in close proximity to your children’s very valuable limbs, rather than in the front yard, braced on God knows what, with something that ought to be used to cut down trees.  But, when faced with the dilemma of sending me back to the doctor for a proper cast removal and bone check versus whatever other important expense he had at the time (food, shelter, etc…), he decided that the some other expense was more important, so he did the best he could to play doctor himself. 

Thank you dad, for being careful with the saw.