warm snowy memory

During the last presidential campaign, Sue and I were invited up to New Hampshire to meet a candidate. It's a longer story than I will tell here but Sue actually shook Barack's hand while the closest I could get was to watch him make his way to and from the house on a snowy morning. This snowfall was very heavy and wet but it wasn't especially cold. In truth, the weather was accurately forecasted; at the time, I would barely allow myself to dare believe this guy would become President.

All of this came back to me today when Sue reserved a birthday gift of a framed picture of that day. Our host is also a photographer and when Sue unwrapped the gift, I realized I probably need to take more pictures. Seeing this image was as if someone had scanned a cluster of my neurons and downloaded the image. I can feel the moisture in the air and remember happily trudging through the thick snow. In addition, I recall Beyonce's performance of At Last where she became so overwhelmed by the moment that she hurried away from the spotlight before the tears really flowed.

I googled Barack Obama New Hampshire and quickly found the text of a speech he gave shortly after we saw him. It includes lots of "yes we can." Even after nearly two years, despite the economic downturn, the legislative battles, and even the difficulties of managing wars, I confess to feeling a lump form in my throat as I read his words. While he never wanted to be a savior, he was evidently prophetic:

We know the battle ahead will be long. But always remember that, no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics. And they will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks and months to come.

We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

Sometimes it feels brash to plan too far into the future. Although Sue had heard the line before when uttered by the Car Talk guys, the physician's diagnosis that "you shouldn't buy any green bananas" struck me as funny ... but also uncomfortably reminiscent of cautions about getting our hopes up. Clearly it is important to recognize the dangers of promises about forever. And yet, there is value in living with an awareness of finiteness. Poet Sharon Bryan has been very helpful to me by expressing a middle age view of life in this way in her poem Foreseeing:

so you know without a doubt
that it has an end—
not that it will have,

but that it does have,
if only in outline—
so for the first time

you can see your life whole,
beginning and end not far
from where you stand,

the horizon in the distance—
the view makes you weep,
but it also has the beauty

of symmetry, like the earth
seen from space: you can't help
but admire it from afar

Here in Connecticut, we just had our first hard frost. Otherwise, it's been very mild, light-jacket weather. But winter is on its way. I am eager for the first true snowfall, where the flakes are so heavy they pull eyelids down and where one thinks that if there was no traffic, the collisions of flakes with branches and pavement would be audible. And in that moments, I'll have a fleeting recollection of Barack Obama making his way, late from a previous appointment, up the walk which the Secret Service had so thoughtfully sprinkled with sand. And I won't be ashamed to hope some more.