I wasn’t sure I wanted to reveal this, but, what the heck.
Swearing in of President Barack Hussein Obama
After going back-and-forth on my own head, I decided to post this. I think, now more than ever, we should be sharing our stories of enduring humanity. Here’s my attempt…
Put simply, this inauguration means Possibility.
I almost went to President Bill Clinton’s inauguration (the first) as a student volunteer and organizer. I could not afford airfare, so I had to decline. This time around, it means even more. I cannot tell you how much this election has meant to me personally, but I’ll try.
It means my mother, who raised myself and twin brother and sister by herself so that she could focus on our future success, can see me join in history in a way that she is unable to. She has lost her home in mortgage crisis and is now living in a trailer that gets freezing at night because the windows don’t shut all the way.
I call her every day to make sure she doesn’t freeze in the night.
She’s alone.
And she needs a leader like our new President to lend her a hand – she doesn’t need a handout, she gives and gives as a county social worker, trying to reunify families every day or protect children from be stuck in the foster care system, which costs the County of Fresno so much.
I do all I can think to to make sure she has food and shelter, but am squeezed myself with huge student loan debt.
For my brother, a “normal”, bright kid who is just a few units shy from his degree at University of California at Santa Cruz, the new administration means care and responsibility for those who are hit with life-alerting crisis.
It was on his way home, with one final left to go, at Christmastime in 2003, that he was hit by a cab while riding his bicycle from campus to his job.
He flew up in the air and hit the ground head-first.
Thankfully, he survived, but is now a very different man. Having just turned 31, this promising film director is now living on SSI. Apparently the hit on the head unleashed an underlying DNA proclivity of him to show signs of.
After 2 trying years in and out of county medical facilities, he’s still struggling. He has Medicare, but don’t know how to use it. He starts and stops projects, haunted by the voices in his head, as he now suffers from Schizoeffective disorder.
General and mental health issues have been neglected and it’s now reflected in the lack of opportunity for my brother. Due to his age, we cannot put him on my mom’s insurance, even though he’s very dependent upon her.
Our story reminds me of one of the variations of the stories shown in Sicko. In having to take time off to care for my brother – and now my grandfather, a WWII veteran – my mother has been chronically depressed and take a lot of time off work.
In the current political environment, I worry she will lose her job or my brother’s mental health will suffer. We fall through the cracks.
We know Barrack Obama will make it possible for their lives to improve.
Even my own husband, an Englishman with a Ph.D in history and experience writing for the some of the UK’s largest dailies has been here 9 years and is a legal permanent resident, but due to our recent marriage, it’s pushes back his ability to become a citizen, when he’s paying takes and wants so much to contribute more to this land of opportunity.
Attending this inauguration would feel like being embraced for the struggle and told it’s going to be alright.
I have high ambitions. Like President-elect Obama, I went to Columbia, too, and have a graduate degree. I was an AmeriCorps member in it’s inaugural year and was a Peace Corps volunteer, too. I know what it means to give up creature comforts for the greater good.
I believe I can do more.
I believe Mr. Obama will create additional avenues to give back.
I know what’s possible for me and what I can make happen. Attending this event would show me the Possibility that used to be available to all Americans is once again here, in the highest office in the land.
