ATLANTA (CN) - Although my inauguration trip has been over since last Thursday, I am still awash in the images, sounds and thoughts I experienced while in our nation's capital last week. I keep imagining myself as I was when I was in the third grade. I wonder what I would have thought if I knew back then that sometime in my lifetime, our nation would elect its first black president.
The third grade was a difficult year for me. I was old enough to realize that I was the only black student in a class of white students, and I was also old enough to realize that my neighborhood was entirely black. And I didn't feel comfortable in either setting. At school, the kids constantly asked me questions that indirectly related to my race. And when I was home, the kids thought I was weird because I went to a white school.
So what did I do? I managed to lose myself in books. I spent many hours in the one-room library across the hall from my third grade classroom. Eventually, I stumbled onto a series of children's books about slaves. (Bless the librarian that ordered those books!) After reading those books, I was able to understand to some degree why blacks and whites have a complicated relationship in this country. Fast forward nearly 30 years. Now third graders can read stories about slaves, but they can also read stories about our new black president. Wow!
Three girlfriends and I took a road trip from Atlanta to D.C. last Saturday, but we were actually part of an extended crew of at least 20 people from the Atlanta area. After arriving on Saturday night, my roommates and I headed to the mall to load up on the essentials: thermal underwear, scarves, gloves, boots, etc. as we heard that D.C.'s temperature was likely to dip to the single digits throughout the week. (Not good news for a girl of Jamaican descent who lives in Atlanta) I was starting to feel sick too so I also bought some TheraFlu too, and one of my girlfriends told me I could pop her ibuprofen pills as needed. We were excited because the next day we were going to the inauguration concert at Lincoln Memorial where we see the likes of Jay-Z, Beyoncé and other hot stars.
Since it was a free, star-studded concert, we left our hotel room at about 8 a.m. to make sure that we got a "front-row" seat although the concert wasn't going to start until about 2 p.m. As soon as we cleared the Washington monument, I saw a row of Portolets as far as the eye could see. I knew then it was going to be long day. Although it was still early morning, we were already among a crowd of people that made our way up the mall. As I looked around, I realized that this was one of the most diverse crowds I had ever seen. I saw white people, black people, Asian people, Indian people, young people, middle-aged people and old people.
To get warm in the D.C. morning air, my extended crew huddled together on the patch of grass that we claimed as our own and waited for the concert to begin. We played Uno, took pictures, talked amongst ourselves, ate snacks and surveyed our neighbors as we waited.