Election 2008
(2009-01-19)
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GREELEY, CO
(KUNC) -
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Ever since Barack Obama announced his bid for the presidency back in February of 2007, KUNC commentator Laura Bridgwater says she's been a poor role model for her children. And she - like many - hopes life returns to normal after inauguration day.
I'll be happy when the inauguration is over because then I can give up my news mongering. I'll be able to return to my Square Office in the basement only when President Elect Obama has safely taken his seat in the Oval Office.
Like any junkie, I've been neglecting my duties. Ever since the Democratic National Convention last August, I've been jonesing for information by spending months reading newspapers, surfing the net, listening to the radio, and watching the nation's fourth most respected journalist, Jon Stewart. It's no secret why my kids need haircuts and the kitchen floor looks like a truck stop.
I'm not alone, either. There are swarms of swooning Obama Mamas under Colorado's blue skies. Most of us were too young when John Kennedy was shot to have ever felt this way about a president. I expected this Obamamania to end after election night, but it has spilled into the New Year. We are acting like a gaggle of preteens with a crush on the most popular boy in class.
In my case, I can't point to one reason for this obsession besides the facts that Obama looks cool in sunglasses and I might be a stalker. But I realize that after all of this unlimited media access, I feel like I know him. He's just Barry, as he was called in childhood. He seems like the president next door and we have a lot in common.
Take this, for example. Barry and I were both born in the 60s during the Civil Rights Era and we both had grandmothers who crossed the street when a black man approached.
Upon graduation from college, we were public servants. He earned slightly less than $10,000 a year mobilizing student volunteers. I earned slightly more than $20,000 a year as a school teacher mobilizing first graders to read and turn in their homework. Around this time, he started to go by Barack, and I started to go by Mrs. Bridgwater.
We've both published poetry, too. One of my poems went like this: Hurray! Hurray!/ The flowers are dead/ No more pollen cloggin' up my head! I'm not making this up. Barry wrote one called "Underground" that The New Yorker described as being about "a tribe of submarine primates." I'm not making that up, either.
Even our nuclear families are similar. I married the love of my life around the same time that he did and we each have two daughters. Surprisingly, we have the same rule at our house about dogs, too. My husband told our children that they can get a puppy when he becomes president.
Although I feel like I'm on a first name basis with Barack Obama, I relate to his wife, Michelle, the most. Did you see her hair on the Tuesday morning when she cast her ballot? She was sporting a headband AND a pony tail not her usual Jackie-esque style. I recognized it as the universal uniform of harried moms. I was glad to see that by that evening, with the election results calculated, she had found time to dress up.
All moms have days when we don't get a shower until 8pm, at which point we wonder, "What's the point?" At least now for Michelle, on those showerless, hectic, and trying days, she can tell her girls, "Just wait until the President gets home."
In any event, this road to a hot bath, a new pet, and the White House only further confirms for me that the Bridgwaters might be doppelgangers for the Obamas. Though, in all fairness, I will admit that we do have a few differences outside of the obvious one that we are white and they are black.
Instead of a headband like Michelle, I prefer a baseball cap on busy days. And unlike Barack, who inhaled in college when he experimented with marijuana, I still have recreational drugs on my bucket list. Barry will soon go by Mr. President, and I will continue to go by my one word moniker, like Cher and Madonna, which is Mom.
Ultimately, though, I think our similarities outweigh our differences. Both families have hope for the future because our children are growing up with skin-toned crayons, diversity in the classroom, and the first African American President of the United States.
And, thankfully, when the inauguration is behind us, we can all get to work on domestic issues. © Copyright 2012, KUNC
