Victory

Happy demo-cat 

When Barack Obama won the US presidential election in 2008 I felt euphoric. We lived in Brighton-Hove-Actually and my children remember that when the results were announced the next day, late afternoon for us, I opened the front door of our house and yelled "Y-e-e-e-e-s! Obama!". When The Guardian arrived the following day, I perched my then-five-year-old daughter on the kitchen counter and had her spread her arms wide to show the headline: Obama Wins! while I snapped a photograph.

In 2012, in Toronto, we hosted an impromptu election-results watch party in our rental house; the happy outcome pleased but did not surprise us, and the party doubled as a celebration of our puppy's first birthday. Win-win. 

And then 2016. The plummeting of spirits, the shock of despair, the bitter reality. We mourned collectively. We joined the Women's March in Toronto, daughter and I and husband too, alongside Democrats Abroad Canada and thousands of others who gathered at Queen's Park, the provincial capitol building. We carried placards down the wide boulevard past my office (the building next to that other building, as younger son calls it for its undistinguished frontage) to the US Consulate and on to the plaza in front of City Hall. On January 20, 2017, the day Obama had to cede the presidency to Trump, I joined a sad and sober read-in hosted by the anthropology department, where Latinate words and a lot of kleenex got us through the noon-time ceremony. "I'll be the most boring president you ever saw," Trump had assured us. Like nearly everything else out of his mouth or in his tweets, it was a lie. The bastard. 

And then, last week, January 20, 2021, piercing the heart of darkness that has been the previous four years and especially the last ten months, glory! A frabjous day if ever there was one, all the sweeter for the bitterness in which we steeped before it, culminating in the shambolic mean-spirited January 6th attempt at insurrection. The fear of more violence produced such agony of anxiety that the perfection of the day was almost difficult to believe. Such joy. The songs, the Pledge of Allegiance in sound and sign, the presidential speech, Amanda Gorman and her brilliant poem, the Field of Flags, the good ex-presidents present and the evil one absent. The amazing coats, Bernie Sanders and his homespun mittens. Kamala Harris, Vice-President, wearing purple, a blend of blue and red, subtle echo to the new leader's call for unity: "Disagreement must not lead to disunion," said President Biden. Amen.

Final thought: I hope that President and Dr. Biden did not suffer from the freezing weather. I wanted to send them mugs of hot tea. The specter of William Henry Harrison ("Tippecanoe and Tyler Too") hovered in my mind (1841 Inauguration).  Be well, Bidens. 

Now, do I need a new coat?