Today was a very, very hard day for stuff getting done. Between watching the inauguration (before, during and after which I cried at least 15 times) and a brutal teeth cleaning (floss early, floss often, young people) I was pretty much a spent rag of a wreck by 3pm.
So while our amazing new President and his amazing wife flit around D.C., graciously giving yet more of themselves to the jubilant and adoring crowds, I will probably knock off early (where "early" is "before 7pm"), head to my friend, Dea's, to pick up my candles, and hang with my boyzzz, The BF and Arno J., for a little corny (sorry, Fionnuala!) beeb costume drama before passing out.
This means that tomorrow will be that much harder, because some of the stuff that should have gotten done today won't get got done until tomorrow.
But there are two reasons that this not only doesn't bother me, but thrills me to my core.
The first is that whatever I'm doing and however hard I work at it and no matter how much it means to me and/or the world, this man, this amazing new President of ours, is working harder at something that's exponentially, geometrically, incomprehensibly harder. And, if past performance is any indicator of future returns, I suspect there will be a minimum of fuss and a maximum of grace about it. And if he can do it with what's on his plate, by gum, I can do it with what's on mine, and then some.
The second is that this man, this amazing new President of ours, is our president. At one point, around the same point that I was, he was just another American kid whose mom wanted him to make something of himself. Only instead of having some piffling gender odds stacked against him, he was an American kid from a single-parent household who was half-black, which, in this country, meant he was black, period, and which, as he pointed out in his glorious inaugural address, means a whole lot to all of us:
This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.
Yeah, it's kind of corny. But it's 100% fantastic. If you work at something, bit by bit and day by day, you can make it happen. Not always. But it's possible. And he's going to try it again.
If this man is willing to do that with what I think must be the most horrible job in the world, I can damned sure do it with mine.
Who's with me?
xxx
c
Image by marcn via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.