I'll admit it: I'm tired. No, I'm exhausted. I miss my kids. I miss my wife. I miss going to sleep early, without a knot in my stomach, without wondering if I could make even more of a difference in this election by staying up just another 10 minutes.
I keep telling myself -- and my wife keeps telling me -- that this is The Good Fight. This is the election that gives us back our country. One where we get a President sees the Bill of Rights as an oracle, not an obstacle. One where we earn a President who lives our pain instead of ignoring it.
But the poignant image in my mind, when I look back at the past year, is my baby -- now 18 months old -- learning to more and more effectively tell me that she misses me. The sad looks when she saw the suitcase as I packed for the Pennsylvania primary. The silent "bye bye" waves as I left for meetings. And now, as she gains her voice, the teared-up "bye bye da da". Yes, my wife is supportive -- she knows the stakes. My seven year old understands too -- although even she has matured over the year from superficial "Obama is cool" to issue oriented "Palin scares me because she likes people to shoot wolves from airplanes".
In this last month, this home stretch, I've worried I would start to lag. I gave up a high paying career as a litigator in large part because I couldn't conceive of a life where my family came second. Yesterday afternoon, I was wondering how I could keep the fire going when my baby daughter next chimed a teary "bye bye da da" then started to cry.
Last night I got my answer. We were registering voters -- and signing up volunteers -- at the Earth Wind and Fire concert. Twelve of us had backstage passes, yet none of us left our posts outside of the concert venue. I was there with my wife, and now our baby was at home with a babysitter. To top it off, we had heard a few under the breath comments -- and some loud ones -- about Obama that were less than honorable. So it was, near the nadir of my motivation, that the concert let out.
Out of the crowd came a loud voice -- "That's what I'm talking about!" I looked up, and saw immediately a community organizer. A man who, whether or not he had ever organized anything, had the presence, the personality, the fire, to light up a crowd and galvanize a community. He went on -- "Fired up! That's what I'm talking about," pointing at the twelve of us. People around were listening. People in the crowd were seeing what I was seeing (although maybe appreciating it differently): A young African American man, seeing what nobody expects to see in nominally Republican Fresno -- a big Obama presence. Then the line that put the fire back into my gut: "That's what I fought for. That's why I enlisted in the military. That's why I fought for America."
He's fired up. He's a voice that we need, one of millions of voices of reason, of patriotism, of freedom. His story is an American story. Not the false Americana of a 1950's that never was -- but the real, gritty, story of a man who loves the American people enough to enroll and fight in the military even for a commander in chief with whom he disagrees politically.
He was the reason we were there last night. It didn't take more than my asking once to have him promise to become a regular at our office -- he was saying yes before I got the question all the way out. And I dare -- DARE -- any voter he phonebanks to, I DARE any voter whose door he knocks on, to question Obama's patriotism, Obama's fitness for office. And when this election is over, I hope that the campaign will inspire him, and other patriots, to continue on the trail that Barack is blazing.
So I can do it. I can put my family through this. We are part of a team, each of us, from our own background, with our own hopes, and dreams and families. But we have a common goal, a common purpose, and a common patriotism, and we will move this nation forward together. And our children will be far better for it.
Four weeks from now, we will change the course of history. But it will be chorus of lone, loud, inspiring voices, rising millions of times from millions of crowds over the course of this journey, joined together over race, geography, economics, religion, and the other false dividing points that marks the true change that Barack and all of us have brought. We are one nation. We are one people. We will celebrate our differences, but never again will we allow our differences to divide us, or divert us from making this nation better for all within it.
Four more weeks.
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