Nothing important here. No breaking news. No rants, no outrage. No polls, no funny pictures of cats. Just a dad's thoughts about his daughter's political coming-of-age.
My daughter goes to a small Catholic girls' school here in L.A. (no, that's not why I'm envious). The juniors at this school have the option of taking a field trip to Washington D.C. during their winter break. Although my wife and I had to scrape up the money, we thought it would be a good experience for her. It didn't really register when we told our daughter she could go, but her trip in January 2009 will present her with a special opportunity.
That's right. She'll be in D.C. on January 20, and her school has already arranged for the kids to attend the Inauguration.
This is the first presidential election that has really captured my daughter's imagination, and she has become a diehard Obama supporter. She has the T-shirts, her notebook is decorated with the "Hope" sticker -- she even went to an Obama event on her birthday. So ever since we agreed to send her to D.C. she has been fretting about whether or not the Inauguration would turn out to be a happy experience or a miserable one. The other day she said to me (and this isn't the kind of thing my even-tempered daughter is prone to say), "Dad, no matter who wins on November 4, I think I'm going to cry."
I know that feeling. I remember I had it in 1968. That's the year I became a teenager, and it's also the year I first became politically aware in a serious way. I had my whole heart invested in the campaign, and I still remember how it crushed my spirit to see Nixon win that election. That November Tuesday became the first day in a years-long political horror-show for me, as I watched the conflict in Vietnam drag our country further and further into a moral and spiritual morass, and as I witnessed Nixon turn the presidency into a monument to the abuse of power. It's why I still have a soft spot in my heart for Jimmy Carter, because say what you will about his many failures, he was the first Democratic president of my adulthood -- and his heart was big and it was in the right place.
So I completely understand my daughter's anticipated tears. I have no doubt I'll cry them with her, whether they turn out to be the joyful or the desperate kind.
Her mom and I have tried to keep her from getting her hopes too high about November 4 and January 20 (mostly because we're cautious about letting our own hopes get too high) but now it seems more and more likely that she will be present for one of the most important (positive) historical events this country has experienced in quite a long while.
She will be there to watch Obama get sworn in.
And that's why I envy my 16-year-old daughter.
But I'm also happy for her, because she will be in our nation's capital on the day the Democrats are given the power to finally put this country back on the right track. (May they use that power well.) She will get to feel profoundly hopeful about the life that lies ahead for her and this country, to feel an abundant, unadulterated pride in her nation. Her first sixteen years' experience as an American citizen have included more than their share of fear, despair and shame. She has learned to mock the man who holds the nation's highest office. So she deserves, finally, to feel nothing but esteem for the new man who takes that office on January 20, and nothing but pride in the country that put him there.
I'm not a praying man, but this is my prayer: that my daughter's tears on November 4-5 will be tears of happiness, that January 20 in Washington D.C. will be a day she remembers with joy for the rest of her very long life.