What follows is a belated November-fifth story. Early in the morning of November 5, I got on a plane to go see my mother for a few days. It was an unexpected trip prompted by her unexpectedly having a pacemaker implanted in her chest. (She's doing fine, but she's been keeping me extremely busy the past few days.)
I'll start this by saying that I've had a brutal few weeks. The economy fubar hit the nonprofit agency I work for in a most inconvenient manner -- the stock market tanked just a few days before our biggest fundraiser of the year. As the CFO, I've been working on contingency plans, none of which are pretty.
Just days later, our senior accountant had a heart attack. After lingering in a coma for a week, he died. He was only 58. I am still having a hard time wrapping my head around his loss.
Then came the call from my mom on Sunday -- she'd been to her local urgent care clinic because she'd been having fluish symptoms that she couldn't shake. While she was being examined, the doc on duty noticed an irregular heartbeat. 4 hours and one echocardiogram later, she was admitted to the hospital for observation, and the decision was made 24 hrs later to give her a pacemaker as a precautionary measure.
On Monday, I bought my plane ticket for Wednesday. I spent Monday and Tuesday working frantically to get ready to leave the office for a few days. I stayed at the office late Tuesday, getting home just barely in time to turn on MSNBC and hear Olbermann declare Obama the winner of the election. By that time I was too stressed, tired and just plain numb to have much of a reaction, other than to fall into my bed and try to get a little sleep before getting up at 4:30 a.m. to get to the airport.
I drove most of the 35-mile distance between my house and the airport, left my car at a friend's house, and took a cab the rest of the way.
The cab driver was friendly and chatty, as most cab drivers I've encountered on my various airport runs have been over the years. But this time it was different.
Once we got underway, the first words out of his mouth were: "It was a great day yesterday, yes?"
"Yes, it was."
"A great day for this country."
He talked most of the way to the airport. He didn't need much help from me to keep the conversation going. He told me that he is from Ethiopia. I asked if he was a citizen.
"Yes," he said, very proudly. "I mail my vote two weeks ago. I vote for Obama. It was a great day and this is a great country. The last eight years, not so good. But now, things will be better."
I started to get a little choked up and had tears welling in my eyes by this time, and we were nearing the end of our trip. He looked in the rearview mirror as he pulled up to the curb at the airport and saw that I was fighting back tears, and he turned around to me and smiled reassuringly.
"You know, everything gonna be okay."
I got out of the cab, and he got my suitcase out of the trunk. I gave him his fare and tip. He started to reach out his hand to shake mine, but somehow the handshake turned into a hug, with both of us saying over and over
"Thank you."
Then I went in, checked my bag, and got on my plane.