I’m a student, and Inauguration Day was a school day. For those of us who earn instead of learn, it was a workday. Both Husband, as executive director of a community center, and Daughter, as head teacher at a school for special needs children, planned to incorporate the inauguration into their day via big screen or live feed or projection TV or the like. My school had no such plan.
My school also had no heat. I became aware of this the moment I entered the building and realized that everyone in the lecture hall was wearing a coat. And gloves. Also, I could see my breath as I gasped out loud, “GLOVES?” It was Tuesday, as you know, and the day before had been Martin Luther King Day, meaning that my school had been closed since Friday. Since the furnace is older than the wrapping on a mummy, it takes a good, oh, 55 hours to warm up. I knew from experience that that mummy would be singing, “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” long before I’d be taking my coat off. I turned around and went home.
There would not be many Inauguration Days like this one, this kind of breathtaking, heart-stopping, wondrous moment in history that you would always remember where you were when it happened. I made a cup of cocoa and parked my thawing body in front of the television to watch history unfold. In order to minimize the yuks the network anchors exchange, I chose CNN. I know the BBC covered it as well, but for some things you just have to buy American.
Aretha Franklin blew me away.
This is the woman who taught me R-E-S-P-E-C-T back in my teens. Her voice belting out Let freedom ring! filled me with a people’s sorrow and hope I had always felt from a distance. Later, when I heard pundits comment that repeated references to slavery seemed overstated, it reminded me of present-day Jews who speak of the Holocaust being dismissed as rehashing that Jewish thing they didn’t live through but keep talking about. Every race has a wound. The first thing you learn in therapy is not to pick at other people’s.
I was still feeling the emotion that evening when Daughter called upset that the experience had been ruined for her students. The planned in-school broadcast failed, and her class wound up listening to the inauguration alone in their room on the computer with no picture. They were first-graders, many of them children of color, and Daughter had wanted this to be a memory they would cherish forever.
I recalled that I wasn’t much older than them when Kennedy was assassinated. What I remember of that day was the announcement over the school PA system that the President had been killed. My teacher started to cry and hugged each one of us as she led us out to the playground for early dismissal. She was wearing a pale blue skirt and a white blouse, and she kept telling us through her tears that everything would be okay. I could tell there was a crisis, but her words made me feel safe. I said to Daughter that the day was not ruined for her students. What they would remember was that something wonderful happened, and that they were with her.
With all due respect to kickass headwear, Daughter’s Featured Fotos say Look At The Feet
ed hardy heels
bottom of ed hardy heels
silver snakeskin in the house
marc jacobs on high