Hope for my children
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Last year, about a month before my daughter turned for she asked who the “pretty man” on TV was. “Obama” I replied. When I went to YearlyKos in Chicago, I told her about how the Democratic presidential candidates would be there and she’s asked if “President Obama” would attend. I explained to her that he wasn’t president and I doubted he would be.
She bugged me all summer and fall of 2007 to vote for Obama, but he wasn’t my choice. I wasn’t interested. She told me on my birthday last year, “If you don’t vote for Obama, maybe a bad guy will win and you’ll be sad.” Manipulative little…
Super Tuesday
When we voted in the primaries, I was definitely going to vote for Obama. She was at my side, as usual, making sure I voted the right way. “Is he president now?”, she’d asked. Not yet, but at that point, I was sure he would be.
Throughout the primaries, her face would light up with she saw Obama on TV. She’d asked if he was president yet and I’d tell her not yet. She loved Obama. When she finally figured out he had two daughters, she asked me to call him to see if they could have a playdate. On Super Bowl Sunday, I had taken her to see Michelle Obama speak (the day, I firmly became an Obama fan, incidentally). My daughter recognized that she was seeing a woman who looked like her mom, though admittedly more beautiful. She thought Michelle Obama was a queen.
Once the general election kicked in, she was very much against McCain. “Why is that man so mean?”, “Why does he tell lies? Lying’s bad.”, “I think his mom should give him a timeout.” were questions she asked over and over again. By mid-September, she was done with politics and thought the mean guy should just let Obama be president already. I agreed, but gave her an age-appropriate lesson in democracy.
Tuesday was the first time since she was born that she didn’t go to the polls with me. I hadn’t realized over the last 5 years, how much I loved having my little partner with me, inking the bubbles and beaming with pride when she handed the ballot over to the pollworker. I asked for an extra sticker just for her.
When we picked her up from school, she announced, “Mama, we got to go to vote room and watch people vote like you do all the time! There were so many people and I got a sticker!” That brought a grin to my face. We watched as election returns came in. If she was in the room when a state got called for Sen. Obama she asked, “Is he the president now?” Sigh.
When Ohio was called for Obama, my stomach dropped. “He’s going to be President”, I thought. I gasped. Stood up. Sat down. I had to go outside. I came back in and told her the news; Obama is going to be the next President of the United States. She sat with me as the rest of the midwest was called. By that time, I had realized that McCain wasn’t even going to break 200. By that time, I realized that even if Obama just got the 3 Western states and Hawaii, that he would still have more Electoral Votes than McCain.
When the West Coast polls closed and Obama was announced as our 44th president, tears streaming down my face, my daughter asked, “Is he president yet?” and this time I was able to say with no uncertainty, “Yes!”. She laughed and cheered, then ran off to play some more with the boy. As we sat down to watch Obama’s acceptance speech she wistfully asked me, “Does this mean no more campaign?”. It was at that moment that I realized that almost half of her life-span was this entire campaign.
She fell asleep during Obama’s speech, but I’ve replayed it for her, shown her photos and headlines from around the world. She thinks it’s the coolest thing in the world.
She tells me that Obama will be a good president. I’m kind of jealous that at the age of 5 she has hope in such a political figure. Somehow the boy, who will be 3 next week, has decided he’s interested in politics. Of course, that would happen the day after the election.
Yesterday, as I cleaned up, I grabbed the remotes. I don’t watch much TV and when I do, it’s usually a political show. He asked, “Obama?” I thought he was asking to watch Yo Gabba Gabba. I told him that he couldn’t watch TV. “No! Obama!” I looked at him, “Do you want to see Obama?”, I asked. He smiled, jumped up in the air, “Yes! Obama wins! Awesome!” and then did a little dance. I put on the TV for a few minutes.
The Hope for my children by faboo mama, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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