We awoke to a different world Wednesday

Posted in Mom Stuff
by Lisa Roberson

Each morning in my household, like in most households, when my children get up the normal script of that first conversation is so routine I can almost recite it from memory.

It starts with me saying good morning and asking them if they slept well. They always respond yes and immediately go into a long list of wants: juice, cereal, and Pop Tarts or help finding clothes or a particular cartoon on television.

But on Wednesday, the day after I joined millions in watching Sen. Barack Obama become President-elect Obama after winning an overwhelming number of electoral votes, I knew we couldn’t just get by with the routine.

The usual wouldn’t do because there was nothing usual about what happened Tuesday night.

The wonderful, miraculous, monumental, historic, there-are-really-no-words-in-the-English-language-left-to-describe thing that happened Wednesday night was the stuff dreams are made of.

But not the dreams of my two-year-old son who sees the world in such a way that blond and blue-eyed Lukey is just as good a person to play with as his friend Peter, who has a shade of skin similar to his own.

No, it was the dreams of someone like my 93-year-old grandfather.

Raised by sharecroppers in deep south Georgia and the direct descendent of slaves, my grandfather was conditioned through systematic and sometimes blatant discrimination to believe his lot in life was to only get a decent paying job, buy a home and live long enough to retire and receive a pension.

To dream of anything more was not heard of because there was a place for everyone and it was best for him to stay in his.

When I gave birth to my son close to three years ago, I knew this story yet swore that instead of using it to teach my son to limit his choices; I would remind him that decent job that his grandfather got with hard work was being one of the first black foremen at a General Motors plant.

I would teach him that he came from a different kind of stock and he could be whatever he wanted to be.

He could be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company that employed hundreds and he could become the scientist that cures cancer. He could develop the technology that would alleviate all worries related to global warming or he could just be a guy who teaches science to fourth-graders because he thinks it’s cool.

I would tell him this all the while knowing that it came with an unwritten, but time-tested, disclaimer that president of the United States was not on that list of possible job. Just keep dreaming, I would say in my subconscious.

Well, just a few nights ago, history was made when the stinky, rotting piece of meat of a dream deferred was tossed in the trash right along with the ideology that a black man could never ascend to the highest position in the land.

Barack Obama, surrounded by his beautiful, intact, healthy-functioning family, took to a stage in Chicago and thanked the country for elected him as its 44^th president.

On Tuesday night, I immediately started thinking about what I was going to tell my children about that night, about that moment and about what it means for their lives. But no matter how hard I tried to come up with the words, I just couldn’t.

And, then it hit me Wednesday morning when my sleepy-eyed son walked into the kitchen, where I was standing.

I said to him, “Quick, look at the TV. Look who won. Barack Obama is the new president. What do you think of that?”

He excitedly said, “Barack Obama,” in a language that only the mother of a 2-year-old can understand, “Me wanna be just like him. Me wanna be president, too.”

All I could say was, “OK, baby. You can sure do that. That would be cool. Now, let’s get ready to go.”

There was no need to tell him why for so long he couldn’t dream that dream or why for so many years people who looked just like him just knew that was not a job for them. After Tuesday, I can say that I am fairly confident that my son will never know my grandfather’s world or limit himself to my grandfather’s dream.

He can have his dream of being just like Barack Obama because to him just seeing Barack Obama in the presidency means he has that option.

And, there is no need for him to settle at just dreaming when he has options.

– Lisa Roberson is the Elyria city government reporter. She is also the mother of two children and is counting down the days until both move out and go to college. She can be reached at lroberson@chroniclet.com.