Remembering to hope

This is a post from an earlier version of this site--from Election Day, 2008. I've moved it to this site because I don't want to forget how I felt that day.

Tuesday was an absolutely gorgeous day here, the last day of a long, flaming, jewel-colored autumn. The first day of good things finally happening again in the politics of this country.

At 8 AM, Tony and I took Zooey on our usual morning walk—3 miles, up to Hamline College’s student union, where on weekdays we pick up the New York Times. The flag in front of the polling place at Wilder Apartments was flapping gently and there were about 10 people in line. On our way back, there was no one, so we decided just to go in and vote right then. The election judge said more people had voted by 8 AM than had voted all day in any previous election.

I’d studied all the candidates for a change, so for the first time I knew who to choose in every case, even for the appeals court judges and the soil and water conservation supervisor races that I usually leave blank. That was a good feeling.

But not as good as knowing exactly who to choose for President, and why. Not as good as stopping in at Obama HQ on University Avenue later and running into five friends* who’d also impulsively set the afternoon aside to help get out the vote
Not as good as spending a couple of hours that afternoon leafleting the Como Park neighborhood for the third time (one resident said, marveling, “this must be the fabulous ground operation we’ve heard about.”)

Not as good as watching the returns come in and toasting the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia with Paul and Joan and Tony and Anna and Sam Velasquez. Not as good as watching McCain make his (finally) noble concession speech.

Not nearly as good as weeping along with Paul—who has photographed hundreds of little “d” democratic government meetings all over the country and truly believes in the democratic process. Not nearly as good as thinking about Richard and Ebony and Tia and Tiara and all our black neighbors as we watched people singing and shouting praises at Ebenezer Baptist Church. Not nearly as good as seeing Barack and Michelle Obama stride on to the stage in Grant Park, holding hands with their shy, happy little girls, and then listening as Obama delivered his beautiful, pacific, sober speech, quoting Lincoln... “We are not enemies, but friends...though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. “

Here’s another quote, from The Cure at Troy, by Seamus Heaney, which was read from the pulpit last Sunday:

History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.

On Tuesday, they did.