My Date with Barack

OK, so it wasn’t a date. Unless you consider a brief encounter with a married man surrounded by 16,999 people a date.

But it felt like one. As I stood in the XL Center waiting to find a seat, I felt butterflies. My palms became sweaty at the thought of seeing this man who seems to have united a country as diverse as ours. I wanted everything to be perfect – the coliseum filled to capacity, young and old, rich and poor, black, white and brown. I won’t go as far as to say I got my hair and nails done, but this night was as important as my first date. We won’t talk about how that turned out.

On this night though, an act of God allowed me to stand right by the steps my man would ascend. He walked out, clasping a sea of hands, including mine. But only for a moment, as a mother holding her baby caught his eye. The cynical phrase shaking hands and kissing babies nearly stole the moment from me as she thrust her child in his direction – until he took the little girl in his arms. He didn’t turn with a smile for the cameras as they flashed away. Instead, he looked in the little girl’s eyes, with all the commitment and concern her mother surely carries every day. Held her comfortably enough that her tears subsided in those few seconds. And she, like us, was enamored.

After giving the baby girl back to her mother, he stood on the stage alongside our Congressmen – DeLauro, Larson, Murphy – and among the heirs of Camelot themselves, Caroline and Ted Kennedy. He seemed both humbled and entitled standing there, graciously accepting the praise of those who’ve come before him.

They talked about him: And he talked about us. He spoke of our struggles for adequate healthcare, and promised that we’d benefit from the same perks he and his colleagues do in that regard. He spoke of our veterans, and how shameful it is that even one is homeless or sick without needed treatment. He talked about a wrong war at the wrong time and the politics of fear. He talked about our children and their right as Americans to quality education.

Then he talked about hope. And how despite the claims of others that hope had no place in politics, he hoped anyway. Hoped because as a Black man born of a single mother and an absent father, hope and love was all he had. Hoped because so many of our country’s milestones started with hope. The suffrage movement, civil rights, even the founding of this country began with hope, he said. And as he talked, his theory of change spread like contagion. Just like the audience wave that preceded his arrival, this belief in hope and solidarity and a Black man leading us there took hold. I was terrified and amazed and swept off my feet.

It was the best date I’d had in years. And like those other first dates, I wondered how long this feeling would last. I can only hope.

By Andrea Comer