The Morning After

A friend sent me an email with this:
There was a victory party in Teaneck, NJ.
A handwritten poster on the wall said the following:
"Rosa sat,
so Martin Luther King could walk,
so Barako Obama could run,
so our children can fly.
Yes, we can!"
I feel like I am flying today. I cried last night, no surprise, during Obama's acceptance speech. I was sitting in my living room - my husband was still at Richard Brodsky's house watching the returns there, Brodsky won again for State Assemblyman, hooray! - watching this historic event unfold, and I thought about my father. My father died over nine years ago, but during his life, was a staunch Republican, beginning when being a Republican in South Louisiana meant something different than it does today. When he and my mother first moved to Baton Rouge in the mid-50's, they helped start the Republican party there because the city was all Democrat. He always said he would have helped start it even if he wasn't a Republican because he believed in a bipartisan system. My father's family is from New Orleans, but he was raised in Jackson, Mississippi. I remember as a small child being very proud because I had never ever heard my father say a disparaging word about African-Americans. But he was still a product of his place and time, and my father could not have pulled that lever for Obama, no matter what party held his allegiance. I sat in my house last night, while my two sons were sleeping in their room, and I knew that they will never have any idea what a huge seismic shift had just occurred. To them, it will just be President Obama. To my father, it was an impossibility. I am so deeply happy that the link in that chain is broken forever.