On the phone with my mother, she dropped a bombshell. She's phonebanking for Obama.
That's a bombshell for one reason. She's very shy. She's a great progressive, especially for 75 who's been voting since Eisenhower.
In my weekly phone call last Sunday, she told me she got a call from the Obama campaign asking if she'd be interested in volunteering some time. When she told me, she was seriously considering it.
So I called her Friday to get an update. She in fact is phonebanking for the campaign, in Palm Beach County, Florida where she lives. She will give her time on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Its the first time she's ever gotten involved in any campaign ever. But she's been going through a political evolution that started many years ago when she and my sister participated in the Million Mom March in Washington DC.
An evangelical lutheran, she has disdain for the Christian right-wing. Bad name for evangelicals kind've thing. She watches Olbermann and Maddow each night. She stopped watching Lou Dobbs about a year ago.
Anyway, when she told me, I told her how much I admire her. We talk politics all the time, but she told me how important it is for Obama to win. Her best friend, a life-long democrat, is considering not voting at all, not convinced he's the best candidate. Mom's been working her for weeks.
Then she told me she's been praying every day for Barack Obama. Every day. One day, the answering machine had a message from the local Obama for President office, asking her to consider volunteering. To her, it was a result of her prayers. Because of that, she fought her life-long shyness and went to an office where she knew no one and knew nothing of what they expected of her. A huge step.
She's not sure how the campaign got her number. Either through a $1 donation at a voter registration table manned by Obama volunteers recently, or through a $5 donation she sent through the mail. But the most recent addition to the millions helping to get Barack Obama elected is my 75 year old mother, who, until last week, I would've bet money she'd rather clean the neighborhood's toilets than show up at a strange place filled with strangers and do something she's never done before.
I love my mom, and excuse me for gushing and going somewhat overboard, she's important now not to just me, but to us and to Barack Obama.