Dawning of a New Day

Dawning of a New Day
Originally uploaded by knights_writes

As if there weren't enough reasons for me to feel good about the election of Barack Obama as our nation's next president, last night's footage of the huge crowd in Chicago's Grant Park took me back to January, when Arlo pretty much called the election.

Do you remember the Obama ads, run by the campaign in the weeks leading up to the caucuses, that showed Obama greeting and speaking in front of large groups of happy people? I know, from my description, they sound just like all the other campaign ads that were running at that time--from all of the hopeful candidates. But every time one of those Obama ads would come on, Arlo would stop whatever he was doing, focus his attention on the TV, and say, quite matter-of-factly, "I want to go there."

Even though many of the other candidates had similarly-styled ads at the time, it was only the Obama ads that elicited this avid response. In fact, the only other ads that Arlo has EVER paid attention to are the commercials FOR ADVENTURELAND that began airing a couple of months later. (He said the same thing.)

Something about Obama really struck a chord with my four-year-old. Without coaching or prompting from us (Honest!), he rarely failed to correctly point out Obama in the newspaper or on TV in the months since Obama earned the nomination... although, between you and me, I'm pretty sure Arlo thinks his name is "Rocco Bomba."

Last night, watching footage of the Obama crowd in Chicago, long after Arlo had gone to bed (well, sort of--more on that later), I couldn't help but think that he would have wanted to go there, too.

This morning an Actual Rainbow lit up the sky on my drive to work, and it felt to me like a promise, just like in the Old Testament. Today feels like the dawning of a new day for this country, and I truly hope that things will improve for ALL of us in the coming years. Arlo saw it coming--did you?