To All the Nanas, Toots & Grans of This World
I came to support Barack Obama because I grew more and more fed up with the fact that in a world of plenty many children go to bed without a roof over their heads and hungry. I grew more and more disillusioned that the most powerful and the richest nation on God’s Earth could not feed, clothe and provide a large swathe of its citizens with the basic decency of affordable healthcare. Most of all, I was depressed about a senseless war that drained the whole world of the basic freedoms we were supposed to be fighting to protect. I wanted a sensible person in the White House and all the White houses across this globe who would not ban a mother from carrying a baby’s formula milk on to a plane without the humiliation of first having to taste it in full public view, or where a passenger travelling on an airliner could not carry a bottle of water through security but could buy a liter of whiskey in a bottle and carry that onboard.
So even though I am black, I was looking more and more for plain old commonsense. And on reading about Barack and listening to him I was shocked to find a man who bristled with just basic commonsense.
Then I discovered that he is just about the same age as I am. He is going grey like I am, travelled a lot and lived in different states and even territories like I have, nearly as handsome as I am, we both have African fathers who were not around much and he was raised by his grandmother as I was.
Now that last fact of being raised by his grandmother was truly the clincher. Because I know that there is no better love than that given by a grandparent for a grandchild. My grandmother went up to the heavens when she was over 100 years old. She lived in Africa and I had the good fortune of visiting her just over a year before she went up into the clouds to be a kool nebula. When we met for the last time we laughed and cried together, hugged each other. Nana stood up and walked me to the door when I left – she had not walked the previous three months!
Here was a lady of immense class even if poor. Here was a human being of endless compassion even if she was suffering ill health. She was always there for me whether I was genuinely ill or just playing her for a nice meal of calf’s liver which I drummed up when nine years old, that it had been recommended by the doctor because I needed more iron in my blood. And here was the surprise. She knew all along I was telling fibs about the calf’s liver and yet she indulged me. Here was a person whom in all the years I lived with her never once saw her lose her temper or raise her voice. Here was a woman who raised seven surviving children four of whom were college graduates and numerous grandchildren of the same calibre yet did not even have basic education.
Now I have not blossomed into a potential POTUS but I know deep in my heart that I would most certainly be a lesser person but for her love and nurturing; how she spoke to one more with her demeanour and eyes than her lips. She instilled discipline without the crop. She installed the work ethic without enforcement. But most of all she loved abundantly and unconditionally.
When my Nana left this Earth I went to help lay her to rest and I wept. Not of sadness but of the wisdom and incredible love that this world was being denied and the fact that my children, her great grandchildren never got to meet the most special woman who nurtured and shaped my life. Most times I speak to her quietly because I know she would ignore me if I shout or am too loud. She always preferred calm tranquility to bawling and most certainly brain over brawl.
So if you do not understand why Barack suspended his campaign to become POTUS to go see his ailing Toots and running the risk of losing his momentum and lead in a very hard fought and contested race with just two weeks left, it is because without a shadow of doubt, if he were offered the chance or choice to choose between his Toots surviving another year without pain or him winning the presidency, I would bet my bottom dollar that he would choose the former. Because that is how great, Grans are.
And I pray that Toots stays strong beyond the next two weeks to watch her kin show the World not only how the dignified office of the President of The United States ought to be executed but that the most powerful and still most respected nation on Earth does better using its enormous wealth compassionately than in combat. Let’s steal ourselves a moment to reflect for the new global and world order that will be unleashed in the reign of an Obama administration that set the benchmark for generations to come and for replication across the globe. For he is a man with our sensibilities and instincts who recognises that the next two thousand years cannot replicate the distaste and debauchery of the previous two thousand, for times are far too important for business as usual.
So tonight let’s all raise a glass of whatever it is we drink in salute and honor of the Nanas, Toots and Grans of this world without whom our gene pool beside other characteristics would be more the poorer.
Let’s humbly and without fanfare of our own making usher in not just new blood, instincts and ideals but a sense of community, belonging, fairness, respect and yes, responsibility. It is now our turn. Our generation has to make the rules now going forward, and as we judged those generations who failed before us as harshly as we have done, we must work ever so hard to live up to the aspirations and the mantra of our calling that ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice but not by itself. For each one of us has to reach up and lend our weight to help bend it towards justice’. ……Gods speed!
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