Eight Years Ago: January 20, 2009

The big moment came and went and I was not where I hoped to be.  Yet, as it turned out, I was exactly where I was meant to be.

My husband Keith and I were squeezed together with a thousand or more others, a few yards from the corner of 6th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C, a stone’s throw from the mall where we had come to witness the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States.  After three and a half hours standing in sub-freezing weather, it was evident that we would not clear security in time to get there.  Keith turned on a borrowed transistor radio a few minutes before noon (yes, only eight years ago and no live-streaming!)   Several others near us circled around to listen to a moment that would change history.

I reflect back on this moment now, a day before the current inauguration.  Never would I have predicted this recent turn of events as I stood in our nation’s capital that January day. With fear and trembling, I await the future of our country, while still holding fast to hope that my fears will not be realized.  Yet evidence to date shows me that the days to come are going to be vastly different from what got started that winter morning eight years ago.

 Aretha Franklin sang the national anthem and an African-American mother standing next to me wept openly as she spoke to her small daughter, “Your grandmother is smiling in heaven now.”  Huddling shoulder to shoulder with two young professionals who had just come from their office, a lesbian couple linked arm in arm and with the B.U. educated attorney from the deep South, we smiled, cheered and celebrated as we listened to the now familiar voice take the oath of office.

We had not made it to the mall, yet, with the diverse company that surrounded us, we were exactly where we were meant to be.

At last we made it through security. The parade was about to step off when we found a spot atop a wall along Pennsylvania Avenue. Waiting for the marchers to come by, we met a new set of friends: a Native American couple, a black grandmother from North Carolina and a string of young adults and teens behind us.

As the black cars carrying the President and Mrs. Obama and the Bidens appeared, we craned our necks to see, hoping to catch at least a glimpse through their windows. And then-a few feet from where we stood, as a collective roar rose up from the crowd-  the cars stopped, the two couples got out and walked right by us, waving and smiling as I cheered myself hoarse along with thousands.

We were exactly where we were meant to be.

Later we shared a table and a welcome cup of hot soup with a Mexican-American couple from Texas and a woman from San Diego who told us her ninety-year-old Cuban-born father, disabled and blind in one eye, was planning to come with her had it not been so cold.

We were two people among more than two million that day; and that leads me to believe that there were at least 1,999,998 stories like ours; each story a microcosm of the message that we have heard for the last eight years:  all of us, members of one beloved community; Native-, African-, Mexican-American, of European and Cuban ancestry; white, red, black and brown; straight, gay, teen, college student and senior citizen, together we experienced generosity, patience, civility and kindness.  Thrown together by circumstance we were linked in hope, believing in the promise inspired and embodied by one man and carried out to the best of his ability and the limits of his power; but which, even still, and especially now, will only be fulfilled by diverse communities like the one we were part of that day, multiplied by the hundreds and thousands and millions across the land.

Yes, we were exactly where we were meant to be.