Dear America,

It has been a very long time since we've spoken. I should probably start by explaining where I have been hiding for so long. I have been around, here and there, but I have been avoiding you. I know that is hard to hear, and I feel like I owe you an explanation.

When I was 17, Bill Clinton was elected your president for the first time. I was a surly proto-intellectual who refused to pledge allegiance in school and was, frankly, far too cool for patriotism. Nonetheless, and despite the fact that I was still too young vote, I was excited about Bill Clinton and what his presidency would mean for our country. On Inauguration Day my friends and I skipped school and drove three hours south to DC. We gained tickets and squeezed in to the crowd of hundreds of thousands assembled on the Mall to listen and watch. We could barely see anything, but we could feel the power and excitement of the crowd. And we, four teenage girls born during Gerald Ford's completion of Nixon's term, felt somehow acknowledged by the younger, more progressive president.

Maya Angelou was the poet laureate for Clinton, and on Inauguration Day, she read her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" to an eager crowd. The poem described come out of the shadows and into the light of a new day. We felt triumphant. On this day I felt hopeful for our relationship, America.

Fast-forward six years. I am sitting around the dinning room table in my shared house in Seattle, surrounded by the five women with whom I live. We are listening to NPR relay the testimony of the Monica Lewinsky hearings. In the intervening years I have gained perspective and Clinton has disappointed. He is not only painfully human but had proven himself to be much like any other president we have ever had: a conciliatory traditionalist who is deeply non-revolutionary.

Like many of my peers, I am ambivalent by the time the 2000 election comes around. Most of my friends vote for Nader as a signal that we need a third party in this country. After the election is over and the unbelievable had happened, I feel depressed. In the election of George Bush, I felt betrayed by you, America. As a country, you had become bitter and repressed, and electing Bush sent a pretty clear message that you hate young, progressive, and queer people like me.

Things just get worse and worse over the next eight years. I go from disengaged to angry and cynical. I, like many others, threaten to leave you and head to Canada. But then the worst part happens: I stop paying attention. I check out. I don't read the news because I don't want to know how many soldiers died in Iraq today. I turn off the tv every time George W. Bush's face appears. I think selfishly that my own day-to-day survival is all that matters at this point. I mimic the Bush White House policy and become my own isolationist state. At this point in my story you and I have disowned each other.

And then this guy Obama shows up. I was not really paying too much attention at first, but he kept coming back. And he kept impressing and inspiring. He kept smiling that genuine smile that conveys hopefulness. And he kept working. And suddenly, by the winter of last year, I found myself believing in something again. I was going to support this man in trying to become your president.

Every challenge he surpassed helped me shed some of the scales of hopelessness. Every time he got one step closer to your doors, I felt more awake. I had lingering doubts about whether this country would ever elect a black man to the highest office. Racism is foundational in this nation and works in all ways to promote and sustain the status quo. And yet I hoped and talked and called and wrote. I invested heavily.

And then we arrive at last Tuesday night. It was 10pm in Wisconsin when the race was called and the television stations flashed an image of Barack Obama with the word “President” on the screen. We screamed and cheered and then we cried. I couldn’t speak. I sat in disbelief as every single idea about you, my country, started to fall away from my skin. My eyes filled and my heart jumped and my body began to murmur in aliveness. In an instant I was transformed. In an instant you were transformed.

As I sit at my computer five days later, still strumming with excitement and joy, still tearful at random moments of the day when I think about what this means for you, my country, I realize that that moment fifteen years ago, when Maya Angelou read her poem to a sea of hopefuls, that moment was a prelude to today. This poem, more than anything else I have found, describes the way that it feels to come out into the daylight again and feel love and hope for the nation in which I live.

Here on the pulse of this new day

You may have the grace to look up and out

And into your sister's eyes

And into your brother's face,

Your country,

And say simply

Very simply

With hope ----

Good morning.



America, I hope you can forgive me for turning my back on you. I have forgiven you.


Love,

Amy