Inauguration Day

I received the best birthday present today ever. I watched our new President, Barack Obama, sworn into office with great pride and alot of emotion. When I saw him silhouetted in the doorway, waiting pensively to proceed out the door and down the stairs to the podium, I was filled with joy and elation. This is it....the start of something new. Hope lives again....hokey as it sounds, I really think so many of us feel that. For those who insist Presidents always break their word....need I remind you that we have a very DIFFERENT president this time? He brings the experience of growing up "black" in America...and that lends a whole different set of sensibilities to the job. He can appreciate, truly, what it is like to be the underdog. It is not merely rhetoric. He knows it, has lived it, understands it and does not forget it. He has the unique experience of being of both black and white heritage, has seen the world through both prisms of color...denying neither while embracing both. Why does this matter? It matters because for so long, our country has made judgments based on skin tone....people have been qualified or exempted on this basis alone. And today, as we all embrace this man and his heritage, we must now, finally and forever more, look past the skin barrier that so many have used to exclude. He is the best of all of us...that is why he gives us hope. If he can do it, nothing is impossible.

I did not grow up in the era of segregation....I was a child of the 70's when the hippies roamed freely and protested war. Civil rights was still fresh and new and the Black Panthers were not a group I either knew or understood. I was more familiar with the Hells Angels and hippies who hung out on the street my brother and I walked to go to school. I was not aware of being white probably because if you live as a "majority" it is never an issue for you. I never became too aware of my color until I moved to California where there are so many other ethnic groups that are prevailant. But my parents chose to stay in a city where integration was the norm when so many other families were taking part in the "white flight" syndrome and heading out to newly developed suburbs where blacks were not yet settled. My parents believed in making sure their kids knew the world was not made of white. They welcomed all ethnicities and people of any sexual orientation into our home. My younger brother, who suffers from a host of maladies and had been shunned largely by the white kids, always chose instead to surround himself with black friends. They were just naturally more accepting...I always said it was because they understand what it is like to be locked out. They weren't cruel or judgemental, and have always been more loving and accepting. We were not forbidden to date other ethnicities, and all were welcome in our home. I did not fully appreciate that until I grew old enough to know what it meant and what it sometimes cost my parents to be that accepting. There were plenty of people who snubbed my parents because of it. People who left our house before nightfall because they were afraid of being in our neighborhood after dark.

My husband is neither black nor white. He is Hawaiian and Japanese....and our kids are like the United Nations with all our heritages combined. My stepson is Japanese. My children play with all ethnicities and we have chosen to live in an integrated neighborhood as well. Some would even say whites are in the minority here. But I see with each new generation the color blindness that seems to come with it...and that makes me happy. Because I know, and I feel, that we are finally getting there as a nation...where there will no longer even be separate ethnicities because everyone will continue to combine and love each other for what's on the inside, not on the outside.

And so, I am hopeful for our President, our people and our country. Happy birthday indeed!