Inauguration

I actually got up this morning thinking about…Valentine's Day. The menu, in fact, finally crystallized in my mind. And I thought about how now I can go to the café and complete my signage, and let people know what the menu is, and start taking reservations… This is how single-minded I've become. This is how much of a slave to the dream I am.

At 8:00 I jumped in the shower. And at 8:30, I glanced at the clock, thinking I was right on track for getting to work at 9:00, my scheduled time of arrival. 9:00 Pacific Time. Noon, Eastern Standard Time. The exact time our 44^th president was scheduled to take the oath of office.

And I stopped short, and I thought…what the f*** am I doing?

So I threw on my make-up, turned on my television, and sat down. Sat down to witness, at least by live TV, history in the making. A history for which I have been longing for eight long years…and for which this nation, and a people dragged from their homeland to serve as slaves to the founders, have been longing for far longer than that.

In this same room, on this same television, I watched, terrified, mesmerized, the saga of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That, too, was history in the making. A sad, desperate and evil history. A history which plunged our nation into a deep moral, ethical and spiritual vacuum. (Though who is to say that the recently defunct administration would not have led us there anyway…without any help from Osama Bin Laden?)

So now…finally. Finally. We have a new president. A new administration. A new direction. And that direction is "up." "Down" is not an option. Nor is sideways. Perhaps we had to go so far down…descend into hell, as it were, to get to this day in history. To clamor for this level of hope. To throw off the backward-thinking, the returning to old hatreds, the nurturing of old grievances.

Today is day one.