Vamonos Americanos!

The presidential election of 2008 was great on so many fronts. One being that it brought me closer to my extended family. When my grandmother died 3 years ago, she had on the top of her reading stack Dreams of My Father by Barack Obama. I remember my brother thumbing through the book the day she died. I said to Chad, "How many 93 year olds have a book about Barack Obama on the top of their reading stack?" Perhaps she campaigned from heaven because I dare say all of her children, children-in-law, grandchildren, grandchildren-in-law, and great grandchildren are die-hard Obama supporters. I exchanged several e-mails with my extended family throughout the campaign. My (bilingual) Uncle Bart, whom I affectionately call "Tio" (Spanish for "uncle") sent many in his address book a photo of this campaign poster he had hanging from his deck. I e-mailed him back saying only, "I want that poster." To my surprise, two days after the election it was waiting for me on my doorstep. James, a budding reader, read it aloud upon seeing it, "O-bam-a-nos...Oh I get it, because Obama knows a lot about our country." I explained that "Vamonos!" is an exclamation in Spanish that means "Let's Go!" and that this was a play on words meaning "Let's Vote for Obama!" In our excitement for inauguration day, we proudly displayed our Obamanos! poster and hung our flag from our deck.

I personally know 7 people who went to the inauguration of our 44th president. I was so envious of each of them but reminded myself that I was much better off in my warm family room without the crowds and crowds of people. A friend sent some great photos of the day and the photos of the crowds literally made me get feel panicky...no, I don't do crowds well.

Inauguration Day was such a great day. The day before, MLK Day, we looked up a community service project on Obama's website. We got up early and met 20 new friends at a storefront downtown where we all disbursed to clean up our downtown area of trash. It was cold, some of the trash was frozen to the ground...but it was such a great thing to be out as a family in our community doing something good for our community knowing that community service projects were happening all over the country. We picked up trash where we had celebrated the new year, at the "Pine Cone Drop". I noticed that the clock was counting down again even though we were 19 days into the new year. Then, I realized the clock was counting down the time until our new president would be inaugurated. 27 more hours until a new President. 27 hours later I was snuggled up on the couch with Meagan glued to the television. We gave Meagan and James the option of coming home to watch this historic event. Meagan wanted to come home. James didn't want to miss art, so he chose to stay at school and listened to the inauguration on NPR during his art class. We didn't give Charlie the same optionto come home from school because...well, because I knew he would chat through the whole thing and ask to watch Go, Diego, Go! instead. The boys did get to watch it on TIVO later. Jeff watched it online at work. I could hardly pull myself away from the television. During the inauguration itself Meagan and I clapped and prayed and cried and cheered with the crowd. It was just like being there, only warmer. Or so I had myself convinced. But now the reports from these 7 different people are starting to trickle in and their descriptions of what it was like to be there have me amazed and wishing I could have been there too. Maybe in 2012. Until then, Obamanos Americanos!