MotherReader

Last night my family attended Obama’s final campaign rally, held here in Virginia. The rally turned out to be a little more involved than I had thought. Getting 100,000 people in a rural fairground will do that. After an hour creeping along the one road in, we pulled into a neighborhood, parked the car, and walked the rest of the way. Two miles. Inside, we waited an extra ninety minutes beyond the scheduled start time for Obama to speak. Afterwards, we had to take baby steps with the tightly packed crowd to get out of the fairground and then, at midnight, walk the two miles back to our car. Along the way we saw that drivers had simply abandoned their vehicles all along the road to the venue. Cars were on the shoulders, the paved walkway, even the median strip as far as we walked and beyond.

The verdict is out on whether we were in “real” Virginia at the time. Driving to Manassas, we saw signs proclaiming the area “McCain Country.” Inside the rally, however, I saw the real America that I know in the variety of people and colors and cultures. There on the fairgrounds all people — black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Indian, Muslim, young, old — were doing the same thing. Trying to see Obama through the freakin’ blinding lights focused out on the audience.

His speech wasn’t new, but it was inspirational. Even though we were cold and tired, it was exciting to be there with my family making history. But perhaps most important for me in looking around at this diverse crowd was the validation of an inclusive politics. This is where we belong. Change is coming. Hope is here.

I just got back from an Obama event. What a rush. It was a town meeting held here in Northern Virginia, and I brought my two daughters. Unfortunately, I did not bring my camera, to my now crushing disappointment. I left it home because it doesn’t take decent pictures when you are far away from the subject. However, when you are so close to the subject that you could toss a Nerf ball to him... well then the camera would have been handy.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

Oh, and did I mention that my cell phone wasn’t charged because it hasn’t been working, so I didn’t charge it? Of course, it would have done fine taking pictures of someone famous and perhaps presidential three feet away from me. You know, if the battery hadn’t died.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

But let’s focus on the positive. We did get there early and did get nice seats behind and to the right of Obama. We saw him in profile most of the time, but because it was town-hall style he did face us sometimes. The speech was interesting — not soaring rhetoric, but more down-to-earth policy. He did have some nice elements of humor in both his scripted remarks and his responses to questions.

There was one question in particular of interest to us book lovers, and that came from a woman who asked what Obama would say to young writers. He was surprised by the question, which he admitted was one he hadn’t heard before, but didn’t hesitate to answer. He referenced his two books, and specifically mentioned how he wrote them himself, along with many of his speeches. With a light inflection, he said, “In terms of getting a job, knowing how to write is a good thing.” He talked about how he kept a journal, and how it was important for teaching him not only how to write, but also how to think. But my favorite part was when he said, “Over the course of four years I made time to read all of the Harry Potter books out loud to my daughters. If I can do that and run for president, then you can find time to read to your kids. That’s some of the most special time you have with your children.”

If the entire remarks come online later, I’ll copy that whole section rather than relying on my scribbled notes on a volunteer application form. (I did find this video about him reading the Rowling books.) But I was too excited about a potential president that really cares about reading and writing to wait. Also exciting personally — the yin to the yang of leaving the camera home — Obama walked right by us, and my younger daughter got to shake his hand! Shake. His. Hand. My older daughter debated waving the copy of Harry Potter that she had brought along to read during the wait, but since it was book five, we decided that its extraordinary size might cause it to be seen as a weapon by the Secret Service agents if she wielded it over her head.

There’s good timing, there’s bad timing, and then there’s annoying timing. The first two are well understood. The last might best be explained by this situation.

The family and I were in Virginia Beach to visit my mom, brother, and niece. It had to be a quick trip, driving down on Saturday morning at leaving at dinnertime on Sunday because we had to be back Monday morning. All well and good. Until I found out that Barack Obama was speaking at the nearby convention center at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday. We should be almost back to Northern Virginia by that time, but it’s Obama, like three miles from my mom’s house. And it’s Obama.

See, that’s annoying timing. Two hours earlier, and we’d certainly go. Two hours later, we couldn’t possibly go. If we left after the speech, we’d get home after midnight. If we left without going to the speech, I’d beat myself up about it. The kids would have to go, they might get tired, the wait would be long, the center might be crowded, we’d have to drive late at night, the kids had school the next day, Bill had work. What to do?

We went.

We didn’t know what to expect, given that Virginia Beach is not Democrat land. We figured that it might not be all that crowded and decided to get there about 6:30 instead of 5:30 when the doors opened. I wouldn’t call that choice a mistake exactly, but I will say by the time we got there the huge convention center parking lot was filled. No matter — we parked in a nearby lot. We approached the venue from the side and then saw the line. No worries — that’s to be expected. But as we walked and walked and walked to get to the end of a line that had to be about a half-mile long, we began to wonder how crazy it was to do this. Even though we thought that we wouldn’t be able to get in, we decided to wait until the official speech start at 7:30 p.m. to see how it was going.

As it turns out, the line started moving quickly right before our determined decision time, so we stayed the course and made it inside. The process was disorganized, the crowd was huge, the kids got tired, Barack started late, and we had to leave early. But we were there. Just us and about 18,000 other supporters. Holy cow.

The funniest thing: Our third grader is in charge of the class stuffed animal, Tracker, and we told her how cool it would be to write in Tracker’s journal that he saw Barack Obama speak. We had to throw the dog in the air a couple of times so he could see over the crowd, but it convinced her to go. Hey, you do what you gotta do.

Wish you could have been there too? Here’s the video.