I was fortunate enough to receive four tickets to Barack Obama’s inauguration from my Congressman. They were fantastic tickets adorned with the phrase, “Admit Bearer to West Front of Capital”. The “west front” location was perfectly aligned with the podium and just behind the seated guest. I was, to say the least, very happy to have them. I only wish I could tell you that I saw the ceremony from my designated section. Though I am no less then lucky to be able to say that I was there because we came within moments of having to say, “I was four blocks away, trapped in a sea of people and fighting for my life while President Obama took his oath”. Here is how it happened:
It took a solid thirty minutes to ascend from the Metro, we emerged from the station at around eight am. We, we being myself, my brother Brian who drove in from Wisconsin, our friend Aly and my eight year old son Cole walked briskly toward the ‘blue gate’ only to be thwarted be the people in the ‘silver’ line. Their line was the width of the street and two blocks long, it was also between us and our line. We initially tried to wade through them but that was an impossible task. So we doubled back.
Now may be a good time to note that this crowd was as dense as I have ever seen. I’ve been to Time Square at midnight on New Year’s eve and stood in line for seven hours to meet an author, I’ve been to parades and huge sporting events but please make no mistake, none of those things hold a candle to this. Anyway, we doubled back and finally found the end of our line. By this time is was eight thirty in the morning and the line was four people wide and stretched over two sides of the Health and Human Services building and it doubled behind us in thirty minutes.
Fast forward to eleven o’clock. Finally we see something that resembles the end of this seemingly endless mass of humanity. We are now I’ll estimate, thirty feet from a banner that reads tauntingly, “Blue Gate”. The only problem was that at this point the line ceased to be a line. Now the blue line had morphed into a sea of people about forty yards wide and just as deep. There were thousands of people emptying from the line into this space. Considering how long it took us to get to this point I began to loose hope that we would be admitted before it was too late. We were now moving literally an inch at a time. We’d take a half of a step and then wait a minute and then take another half of step and so on.
Finally at about eleven thirty we reached the banner! What I haven’t mention yet is that we were so packed together that you couldn’t get an accurate sense of your location or how far you were from something. We realized when we reached the banner that the it was twenty yards from the gate that led to the metal detectors. We were now twenty yards from admittance and it was eleven forty-five. To add insult to the situation we’d come upon three lengths of a now defunct barrier, it had been pushed aside and abandoned - and we walked, nay shuffled right into it. We spent a few minutes attempting to circumvent the barrier but there was no getting around it. It was then that a real feeling of dread poured over me. I had been telling my son for weeks that even though it was going to be difficult getting to the Capital and even though it was going to be cold, that he and I would be attending what I believed to be the most impact full human moment that he or I would live to see. I explained to him that mankind mostly moves forward at a glacier’s pace but that every so often, we the people of this planet make a generational leap. I told him that there had not been one so far in my lifetime and that we were privileged to be alive at this time. That to witness this momentous human growth in person would be defining moment in his life and now I had to tell it wasn’t going to happen. I bent down as far as I could, my eyes filled with tears and and I told him that I was sorry but that I didn’t think we were going to get in. I was so angry at myself for not leaving earlier in the morning that I was at that moment beaten into submission by the incredible sense of parental failure that I was feeling. I began to turn my attention to how we were going to protect Cole when those gates closed in our faces and the mass of people lost their collective minds, simultaneously.
Then suddenly the only person in our group that hadn’t given up, spoke up. Cole said, “Dad we have to jump over this thing”. Up to that moment the people that we shared this line with had been so orderly and polite and like-minded that I couldn’t even consider wanting to cheat the line or push another person. Jumping the barrier to get back into the flow of people headed towards the scant ten foot opening in the security fence seemed improper. But Cole was right, we weren’t getting in if we didn’t take matters into our own hands. I said my brother Brian, “if we don’t do something we aren’t making it”. So Cole hopped that gate and we all followed. The moments that followed were frightening, we were now being dragged by the movement of the people. I was doing my best to shield Cole from the pushing and the pressure of our proximity. We were at times swept backwards and I’m sure if we had lost our footing we’d have been trampled. We stayed on our feet, followed the tide and when I thought we were close enough we, much to my own disappointment - pushed. The next thing I knew we weren’t in that ocean of people, we were in a short line for the metal detectors. We made it! It was then that Cole and I realized that Aly and Brian were no longer behind us. We waited a moment but we couldn’t find them so we turned and ran to the Capital.
Our space on the lawn had long since been filled so we scrambled to find a vantage point - there was none. Every angle was blocked every ledge was overflowing. The only ground that wasn’t covered in people had trees on it. I wasn’t making this far without seeing what we had come to see. So I told Cole to climb up a few feet into a tree and stick his head through the branches. I stood behind him and watched the video screen over his shoulder. We arrived at our new seating assignment just as Barack Obama’s hand rested on the Lincoln bible.
The moment wasn’t as I imagined it would be. We weren’t front and center, we didn’t hear Yo-Yo Ma play, my brother wasn’t with us but it was no less perfect then I had hoped. Cole was right in front of me and he had the same huge smile on his face that I imagined he would. He listened intently with a focus well beyond his years. We were there, we made it! We stood together on the lawn of the Capital, albeit in a tree with millions of people and soaked up the overwhelming feeling that tomorrow was going to a better day. I hugged Cole tight after President Obama finished speaking and I whispered in his ear, “I’ll never forget that we were here together, I love you”.
Good news, Brian and Aly got through too, my brother said that he was at the screening area when the police decided to close the gate. He had just made it through with a moment to spare. It took twenty police officers to close the gate while the crowd chanted, “let us in” and pushed so violently that the officers had to brace the fence with their bodies. Brian and Aly missed the oath being taken but arrived in time for the speech. Brian later told me that he hugged a stranger that stood next to him during Obama’s remarks because he was sobbing “so helplessly” and “just looked like he needed a hug”. That moment sums up the day and the feeling that permeated the frozen air on the mall. We were all tired from the last eight years, hopeful and ready to believe again. The people in the crowd were as one. So much so that a stranger could hug you without notice and you’d hug them back. So much so that my son and I didn’t care that we weren’t at our perfect vantage point. It turns out that it didn’t matter if you were jammed into a tree, in the best seat or standing behind the Washington monument... if you were there the hope filled you up.
We drove four hundred miles, spent countless hundreds of dollars, stood frozen in a line for some four hours, were nearly in a riot situation and had to jam ourselves into a tree but it was all worth it. I’d do it again without hesitation.