Motherhood: Three Hours in Line for This?

Last night Matilda and I went to a rally for Barack Obama at my university. Coming from the decidedly non-swing state of Massachusetts, I was excited by the prospect of being a part of the political process in that way and of letting Tilly feel like she's a part of it too.

All day people were talking about whether there would be enough room for everyone and some students actually started lining up eight hours before the event. By the time Til and I were able to join the line at 5:45, it was already 6 blocks long and still growing fast. We waited with a few of my fellow students and ate pizza and stood around. Tilly drew in her notebook that she brought and played tic-tac-toe and hangman with people.

She was so excited to be going. We've talked about Obama before and although she's not exactly well-versed on the finer points of his campaign, nor is she really aware of McCain as a possible alternative, she knows that war kills people and that her parents think war is wrong and that George Bush has made a lot of lousy choices that damaged our country and that Obama wants to change all that and make our country a better place. To tell you the truth I'm not sure I could tell you exactly what she was thinking or why she wanted to go, but she did.

Of course the reality of standing in a line for three hours wasn't quite what she had imagined us doing. Still, she was a good sport, and even though there were a few times when I didn't think she was going to make it, she always pulled through.

We passed the protesters, all ten of them, ("I'm NRA and I'm not voting Obama," "Obama roots for Kansas" - which apparently is a football reference, that's a serious game out here) and the counter protesters, all three of them, ("I'm not with stupid --> I'm voting Obama"). We went through the metal detectors and walked around among the university students and local people who had turned out to support Obama.

Til was really excited at first, jumping around and wanting me to push through the crowd with her so she could see better (she settled for being on my shoulders). But Obama wasn't scheduled to start speaking until 9:30, and she was already tired. Each time she complained I asked her to hold out a little bit longer, reminded her how excited she had been to see him and how long we had waited in line.

But by 9:15 she'd had it. She was done, bursting into tears before I could even try to convince her to stay. "I'm just too tired," she said, "I just want to go to bed."

I couldn't refuse, and really, as a mother bringing my young daughter to a late evening rally, I'd known this was a possibility. So we said our goodbyes and headed home. In spite of how tired she was, I could tell she was torn. She did really want to see him.

"Come on," I told her, "let's run and we can be home in time to watch him on TV."

And we did. And even though we didn't actually get to see Obama in person, and even though it could safely be argued that we stood in line for three hours for exactly nothing, I'm still glad I brought her. She got to see how many people around us want things to change, and to be a part of it, and I think that's worth three hours of playing tic-tac-toe and eating pizza on the side of the road.

E Sitting Instructions

e will stay here with you today.

ok

if she gets hungry, you can feed her. she eats snake food.

snake food?

yes, it's under my bed.

Gearing up for the most funnest debate of all time and how I've been totally neglecting you people in the meantime

So, hi! I feel this impulse to start this post the way I started every letter I ever wrote as a child:

Dear Reader,

How are you? I am fine.

But you deserve better, don't you? I know I've been shamefully absent lately, and honestly the most I can hope at the moment is that I have not been shamefully absent in the rest of my life as well. Have I? I don't know.

The point is this: thing are going well. Each of my classes is teaching me new and sometimes unexpected things (well, with one exception - the "intro to grad studies" is the biggest waste of my time, evah!) and I've even started cultivating a social life, and here's where the politics comes in: watching the debates with smart, literate people who drink beer and yell at the TV? Awesome.

Camp Grad School is fun. I have made new friends.

So besides watching the debate (and all of the Katie Couric interviews I can find online) what have I been up to? I'm working on a new story, reading lots of fiction, rediscovering the hilarity of Vladimir Nabokov, navigating departmental politics, figuring out what rhetoric actually is, making connections, tutoring in the writing lab, reading for a literary journal, thinking about teaching next year, exploring, and trying to find time for my family.

Steve and the girls are fine, too. We're keeping busy.

One of the things that has thrown me into rethinking just about everything is the scope of this whole grad school/career in academia thing. I'm not much of a planner. I realize this may sound odd to some of you know who know that I almost always have a plan, but what I mean is that this thing that I've undertaken now involves a kind of long term plan, a looking ahead, that I've never been particularly good at or inclined towards. It seems to involve a kind of shaping of my life that is both a retrospective analysis and a projection into the future. It's made me realize that in the past when I've "had a plan" what I really had was the beginning of a plan, the first steps. The plans I made never had an end, or even a middle, and they certainly never extended more than a year or two into the future. More like a direction than a plan, per se.

Whatever happens next, it will be an adventure!

I don't know where all of this planning and thinking will lead me, and I have a feeling it will all come full circle and I will realize that I'm doing what I want to be doing and I should probably just stop over-thinking and get on with it already.

Meanwhile there are plots and counterplots, politics and fluff, school work and family, elitism and absurdism, hell in a hand basket and whatever the alternative to that is. (Is there an alternative to that?) It's much easier to focus on how Sarah Palin apparently reads everything and somehow knows nothing and how funny that is, than to take anything seriously.

How about this crazy election, huh?

And I'm afraid after all that, all I have to end with is:

I will write soon. (Which I think we all know is a lie.)

and:

I miss you. (Which is true.)

Love, Nell.