One of 1.8 Million

Why was I on the Mall to see Barack Obama take the oath of office as President of the United States? Living five blocks from the Mall certainly made it seem an easy choice. Even though circumstances led to me being there alone, wrapped up in many layers against the temperatures in the low 20s, I knew I had to be there.

Perhaps it was the memory of January 1981, when I stood with feminist friends on the side of Pennsylvania Avenue waiting for the car with Ronald Reagan. We held up our signs proclaiming “ERA NOW,” one last argument against what Reagan represented. It was meaningless. It could do nothing to stop the self-interested, conservative era that has dominated the county for the last 28 years. So I needed to be on the Mall to see and believe in the dream of our country in which the values of compassion, respect for all people, and the protection of civil rights would be reaffirmed.

Perhaps it was the need to feel the positive energy of this time of transition. I don’t need to say “I witnessed history” as so many stated to reporters. That puts it immediately into the past tense, already written down. I needed to feel people around me who believe in the hope for a new way of honoring each other through our differences. I needed to be around others who want a new definition of what it means to be an American. Well, not really a new definition, but a return to a previously held definition, one that I find in the best times of our history.

Perhaps it was the belief that this man who knows discrimination and has been attacked because of a core part of who he is will understand how destructive that discrimination is to all of us. A man who is bold in stating his belief that those of us who are different from him in our sexual orientation are still to be treated as equals. A man who invited the Gene Robinson, a proudly gay man who also is a Bishop of my church, to begin a concert with prayer.

Perhaps I needed to be there for those who I know and love who could not. I have been surprised by how family members and others have responded to my talking about attending the inauguration ceremony. Even though I was at least a mile away, I stood there for others, representing their hopes and dreams for new possibilities. They can see the pictures of the crowd of 1.8 million, and know I am there, standing 50 feet in front of the Washington Monument. Sorry Dad, I did not wear anything on the top of my cap so you could pick me out, but I am there.

My prayers are with this new President, his administration, his family, and my country, that we can find a way out of fear into faith, out of manipulation into respect, and out of secrecy into mutual respect and trust.