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"Now the work at home begins"
Things I hope to remember about Biden and Harris's inauguration:
- The look of absolute delighted and focused readiness as Harris stood to take her oath.
- Kit exclaiming "She's SO HAPPY!" at Lady Gaga, who channeled everything we were feeling, all the victory and grief and relief, into the words "that our flag was still there".
- The way I immediately felt hungry, in a purely physical sense, as though a space had opened up inside my body that four years of tension had constricted and walled off. Twelve hours later, I still feel that emptiness, that openness. I have more space in my mind too—staying focused on conversations is easier, getting things done is easier, I feel like maybe someday soon I could read a book or participate in a deeply intellectual conversation or make art—but feeling it in my body is extraordinary.
Kit is excited that the president went to speech therapy, "just like me!" They weren't interested in knowing that he has trouble speaking, but they loved knowing that he worked on learning to speak better, a distinction that I hadn't previously made and that I'll be thinking about for a while. In the meantime, I'm just so happy to have a president that I don't mind my child identifying with.
Biden's not perfect, but he's got moon rocks in the Oval Office, and a huge portrait of FDR on the wall across from his desk that he'll see every time he looks up from his work. The State Department is processing passport applications again. The Muslim ban was revoked. There's a national face mask mandate for federal workers. Lives are being saved from the get-go. After four years of the party of death, that's so refreshing.
And so many firsts! A trans woman will be assistant secretary of HHS. A Native American woman will run the Department of the Interior. Vice President Harris's first official act, after breaking three different glass ceilings, was to preside over the Senate confirmations of California's first Latino senator and Georgia's first Black and first Jewish senators. That's a whole lot of kids who can now say "just like me". And if you're asking how we could just be achieving some of these things in the year 2021, then you know how much work has gone into bringing us here, and how much work is still ahead.
Someone asked on Twitter how we could still believe in democracy after the past four years. I believe in it because it survived the past four years—battered and bruised but not broken—and because it let us save ourselves from another four years of hellish misery. We bought ourselves four years in which we push leftward against a gentle breeze rather than walking into a hurricane. It's been made abundantly clear that democracy only exists as long as enough people clap for it like Tinkerbell. But we did, and she lived, and that matters.
I'll try to sit down with Kit every weekend to write postcards to Biden and Harris. Some cards will say "thank you" and some will say "please". It's nice to know that either way, someone in the White House might actually listen and care.
- The look of absolute delighted and focused readiness as Harris stood to take her oath.
- Kit exclaiming "She's SO HAPPY!" at Lady Gaga, who channeled everything we were feeling, all the victory and grief and relief, into the words "that our flag was still there".
- The way I immediately felt hungry, in a purely physical sense, as though a space had opened up inside my body that four years of tension had constricted and walled off. Twelve hours later, I still feel that emptiness, that openness. I have more space in my mind too—staying focused on conversations is easier, getting things done is easier, I feel like maybe someday soon I could read a book or participate in a deeply intellectual conversation or make art—but feeling it in my body is extraordinary.
Kit is excited that the president went to speech therapy, "just like me!" They weren't interested in knowing that he has trouble speaking, but they loved knowing that he worked on learning to speak better, a distinction that I hadn't previously made and that I'll be thinking about for a while. In the meantime, I'm just so happy to have a president that I don't mind my child identifying with.
Biden's not perfect, but he's got moon rocks in the Oval Office, and a huge portrait of FDR on the wall across from his desk that he'll see every time he looks up from his work. The State Department is processing passport applications again. The Muslim ban was revoked. There's a national face mask mandate for federal workers. Lives are being saved from the get-go. After four years of the party of death, that's so refreshing.
And so many firsts! A trans woman will be assistant secretary of HHS. A Native American woman will run the Department of the Interior. Vice President Harris's first official act, after breaking three different glass ceilings, was to preside over the Senate confirmations of California's first Latino senator and Georgia's first Black and first Jewish senators. That's a whole lot of kids who can now say "just like me". And if you're asking how we could just be achieving some of these things in the year 2021, then you know how much work has gone into bringing us here, and how much work is still ahead.
Someone asked on Twitter how we could still believe in democracy after the past four years. I believe in it because it survived the past four years—battered and bruised but not broken—and because it let us save ourselves from another four years of hellish misery. We bought ourselves four years in which we push leftward against a gentle breeze rather than walking into a hurricane. It's been made abundantly clear that democracy only exists as long as enough people clap for it like Tinkerbell. But we did, and she lived, and that matters.
I'll try to sit down with Kit every weekend to write postcards to Biden and Harris. Some cards will say "thank you" and some will say "please". It's nice to know that either way, someone in the White House might actually listen and care.
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That is wonderful.
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Yes that.
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It isn't magic, but it feels like magic, because it only happens if we do it together.
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As did Amanda Gorman, Kit might like to know:
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/21/us/amanda-gorman-hamilton-speech-impediment-trnd/index.html
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