He's been our president for almost six years now - one and half terms. My world of progressive, liberal, solidly democratic friends has differing views on his presidency. Some are disillusioned - he didn't live up to their hope for great, radical change. Some feel he's done the best he can in a landscape of partisan gridlock and tea-party-fueled racial hatred, and that he has accomplished a lot. I'm in that camp, for the record, but both points of view are valid.
Yet in 2014, wherever your politics fall, in so many ways he is President Obama first, and President-Obama-the-first-Black-president second - or at least that fact is less sharply in view. We are used to him. We have watched his daughters grow up and we have watched Michelle Obama be awesome as she makes her way as First Lady with such panache (which is probably such an act of buttoning up her full self that we under appreciate what she is actually pulling off).
But let's go back. Let's remember our own personal Nov 4, 2008 and what that moment in time felt like as we gathered to watch in wonder and disbelief as - in our lifetimes, our children's lifetimes, our parents' lifetimes, and for some our grandparents' lifetimes - we elected an African American man president of these racist United States.
I'm awash with those feelings right now. I am three quarters of the way through Americanah, (click on the link if you don't know about this amazing piece of literature by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) and just finished her recounting of electing Obama president, and so my memories have flooded back and I'm am sharing them now, free flow unedited blog style, before they recede and fade back to gray.
A small group gathered at my house, some of my circle of black, brown, and white lesbian friends, my spouse, my adult daughter, my young granddaughter, a friend's adult child, and another friend's small child. We watched history unfold, together. We were abuzz with excitement and anticipation as the results rolled in. We held our breaths and waited, and maybe prayed. And then all joyous hell broke loose and soon we watched with utter amazement and unabashed jubilance as this beautiful, brilliant man and his beautiful family emerged from the darkness of election night out into the lighted stage of Grant Park in Chicago to speak to the world as President-Elect Barack Obama. It was a moment where everything seemed possible because we had just achieved the impossible.
My granddaughter is now nine and her only conscious memory of a U.S. president is of Barack Obama, and of the First Family at the White House being a Black family. This may not occur again in her lifetime, but think about this - the foundation of her thinking about power and leadership and what is normal and expected includes this reality - that the guy in charge and his family look like her family, even down to the intricacies of interracial extended families. For me, this is something at least as powerful as whatever President Obama accomplishes or doesn't in his two terms - that utterly profound shift in point of view about what is possible AND what is normal.
So while we go about our daily lives in 2014 (it's time for me to go grocery shopping), whether you are disappointed with President Obama for the drones, or pipelines, or not doing enough for Black people and poor people; or if you love him almost without exception for who he is, what he is trying to accomplish and has accomplished, and because he achieved this "first" and changed the world forever - take a step back into your memory and your heart and remember the night of Nov. 4, 2008 and how it felt to see the world crack open and possibility explode ten thousand fold.
Here are a couple of snapshots and a video that are a part of my experience. I hope this post and these images inspire you to look back, too. Thank you, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, for pages 437-449 of your book, and the sharpness with which you painted that night and helped me to float for just a while in my own memories of that remarkable moment in time.
Grandbaby, age 3
My daughter and me
Yes we can!!
Moments before the election was called...
And a few TV shots of what followed. (There are no photos of our victory hugs and screams because we were all living it, not recording it).
