this is our time...this is our moment...

i went to ames last night to watch election returns with my daughter, addie [nearly 35], her husband dwight [33], daughter nyla [almost four] and son jabari [ten months]. i began the campaign season over a year ago as a joe biden supporter; i was a precinct captain five months ago, but ultimately joined obama's group as the caucus proceeded. addie [who attended her first caucus in mason city with me in 1984, when i was county mondale chair] and dwight have been long-time obama supporters. nyla attended his big appearance at hilton last fall, and remembers it well.
i knew that i had to watch the returns from south dakota and montana with them, as a family. it was and is important to me--and to them--that we experience this together.
as i write this, i am listening to fresh air on npr, listening to another great terry gross interview, this one with a close friend and advisor of bobby kennedy, who was with him in california the night he was killed. forty years ago today. they are talking about, among other things, how bobby picked up the role that he brother, john, left behind upon his death. that of personifying the spirit of hope and of dynamic new energy for a new, younger generation, the proverbial leaders of tomorrow. the timing and similarities are too obvious to mention.
but the significance of the events, the convergence, the pooling and summoning of this untapped energy, and the opportunity it affords to experience again this feeling--unmatched in anything i've done--not only again, but with my two generations of off-spring, is unbelievable, and one i gladly resume and undertake. it's not like it makes me feel young again. it's not that kind of thing. it's not an age thing.
it's that vibrant hope thing; that the promise of america, the goodness and potential it affords this country and the world to actually do good--and not just talk about it while lining the pockets of the rich and connected--can be fulfilled, and, after a forty year hiatus, actually be realized in my lifetime.

i realize that sounds all maudlin and shit, but when it seems that all the efforts of the lifetimes of countless thousands and millions of people, famous and not famous who have lived and died in the face of adversity and against unbelievable odds to achieve progress toward a common goal of trust, hope, faith, peace and kindness toward our fellow men and women, regardless of [fill in the blank], after so many years of not just no prgress, but of outward regression and the growth of hatred and animosity in the name of god, love, and goodness which veils divisiveness and polarity, to feel that we might actually resume walking as a nation toward that goal, well, i want and need to believe that it is going to happen.

and to share this with my kids, and their kids, and to see that they share the same hope, joy, energy, and spirit of sharing and of love for others, well i be goddamned but isn't it a great sensation?
at the conclusion of barack obama's riveting and revitalizing speech in st. paul last night, and despite the presence of nyla [who stopped watching "alvin and the chipmunks" while obama was speaking, as she always does] and jabari [who, i kid you not, sat on the floor, speechless, his eyes fully trained on the screen, following every word until he was finished], i let out a "holy SHIT! that was some speech!" and nyla didn't scold me for using a naughty word. it was quite an evening to spend together as a family. and it's going to be quite a campaign. i know that i'll be pounding the pavement with little kids in tow between now and november.