This post is especially for the Kool-Aid drinkers, the naive children who didn't really understand how the world worked, the Obamabots, the cultists. 

I wish I had had more time to appreciate the moment.  That's what it means to be middle aged.  You get to a certain age and it seems like life just starts rolling past you faster than the scenary out the window of a bullet train.  Middle aged people have been complaining about that (sans bullet train metaphors) since they started living that long, and younger ones have been rolling their eyes and not appreciating what that means until they get there themselves.  So the truth is, I've been so damned busy trying to clear away enough time from my job to do my day of poll monitoring tomorrow, and with the training and the prepping for that (the logistics get a litte more complicated when you end up having to monitor from outside, and on a day when they're predicting rain), that I just haven't had time to take in seismic event that's about to happen. 

For those who, like me, haven't, stop and take time to and consider sheer improbable cinematic drama of the last twenty-one months. 

Remember the keynote convention address that caused so many to say "that guy's going to be president some day!"  The announcement in the town Lincoln thought of when he thought "home."  The first time you read one of his books and said, "Jesus, I think he'sactually  the real deal."  There we were, cynical, ironic, smirking, savoring the smug detachment that comes with twenty five years worth of despair over the fate of our nation like it was some especially well-built dry martini.  And, like Rick and Louis in "Casablanca," some of us found that the ashes of our idealism still contained some pesky embers that could be fanned back into life by someone who dared to call us to our better selves. 

So we signed on, warily, feeling that squirrely feeling you get in your gut when our inner cynic warned us of all the times we'd dared put our faith in a politician and found ourselves bitterly disappointed.  Every time that happens, the part of you that's capable of hoping died a little, making the next time that much harder and the pain when you were disappointed that much worse.  Which is wjy, for so lone, many of us still had to contend with that little voice that said this guy was just too good to be true, that there had to be a catch, some skeleton in his closet and you waited for the proverbial other clay-smudged shoe to drop. 

 And it never did.  Parking tickets when he was at Harvard?  He has some personal and political contacts a guy in Chicago who was indicted?  His preacher could go off on some alarming rants?  That's it?  That's the best they can come up with?

Then there was that Democratic field.  The best, most able, most competent field of Democratic candidates in decade  The incredibly well-heeled, by past standards, juggernaut that was Hillary's campaign with all the years of planning, a primary calendar specifically designed for her and all the Democratic money people and power elites in her corner.  And if she fell, there was Edwards, the presumptive challenger with a chance, and if he fell, the old war horses, Biden and Dodd, either of whom most Democrats would be perfectly satisfied to see elected in the end. 

And damn, but the byplots were as good as the main one.  Hillary's incredibly dramatic campaign and McCain's equally amazing fall and resurrection.  The anger and the bloodletting between Democrats that was swept away by a series of brilliant convention speeches by the Lion of the Senate, by Bill and Hillary, Kerry and Biden, Michelle and Barack.  (And later, of course, by the nightmarishly thuggish Republican Convention and the prospect of Vice President Sarah Palin.)  The beautifully conceived and excuted bit of political theatre when New Mexico yielded to Illinois, Illinois yielded to . . . New York(!) and then, yes, there she was moving to nominate by acclaimation. 

And then came the vilest, fear and smear campaign in recent memory--and recent memories contain many memories of abundent  fear and smearmongering--  coming from a guy who'd made the classic Faustian bargain.  A candiate who counted himself a hero, a man of honor and integrity, running a campaign of slander and innuendo because being president was more important to him and, ironically, losing because he abandoned the person he thought himself to be.   

Its been Frank Capra directing a script by Allen Drury based on a novel by Robert Penn Warren. And coming next?  Well, back in May, I did a post about my day as a poll monitor at a primary early voting site.  Commenting on my feelings about being warmly thanked for a half-day's work by a random African American woman who'd just voted, I said something that I still believe:

It was a reminder to me that come January 20, 2009, we will all look at each other differently if we elect him.  It was a reminder that, if we elect him, a  slender, desparately needed, bridge of trust will be thrown over the abyss of hurt and mutual suspicion that has separated black from white for decades.

It's not the main reason I'm for Barack, but it's no small thing.  Not a small thing at all.

I've done a lot of stuff I've never done before because of Barack Obama.  Contributed significant sums of money, worked polls.  And blogged and commented on blogs.  The latter has been the most gratifying because of all the people here I've interacted with--both positively and negatively.   In the process, I've come to feel something that feels unexpectedly like friendship with people I do not actually know. That's really unlike me, for what its worth.  Indeed, that sounds suspiciously like something I'd have made fun of, not too very long ago. 

Some of the people I've sparred with, and against  here drifted away after the fights of the primaries gave way to the (comparatively) harmonious discourse of the general and I miss many of them.  Some who are here now, I suspect will drift away after this week, as we try to get our lives back to something more like normal.   Its not impossible I could be one of them..  Probably not me, but, who knows? 

Regardless, it seems likely we'll drift away and apart after January 20, if not sooner, because, well, that's what happens and that's how it happens.  Its what we mean by "life goes on."  Before that happens, I just want to let you all know its been good knowing you.

See you on the other side.