01/20/09

My sweet daughter - you are three weeks old today - January 20th, 2009. Today is an important day, one that will go down in history forever. At 12:05 pm today, I was feeding you on the couch, snuggled in blankets, while we watched Barack Obama say the vows to become our nation's 44th president - the first African-American president in America.

Now, Mommy and Daddy don't agree with most of what Mr. Obama stands for. But we've been down this road too many times already. The important thing is what he does for our country first and foremost - he opens doors to black children and adults around the country who feel they could never be President, that since it's never happened before, that it wouldn't happen in our lifetime anyway and why should they even hope? These fears have now been decimated. There is nothing that someone of a minority cannot do if they want it bad enough - Mr. Obama is proof enough of that.

We hope and pray together that our own personal fears will also be unfounded. But I cannot pretend that this scene does not touch my heart...the sight of Barack and his wife Michelle in that gorgeous sparkling yellow dress and jacket, walking down the street hand in hand as part of the Inaugural Parade, waving to the crowd that is packed like sardines in a can. People are jammed into windows, on balconies, on the streets, in doorways, on shoulders, anywhere they can get a vantage point of this man and his wife.

I am so, so glad that you will grow up never knowing a time where the fear of recurring racism keeps people from trying to achieve their wildest dreams. I hope to God ignorance and fear are dying today.