Gestures of Grace

Not the best photo, but Ellis and friends on Inauguration Morning, waiting to hear President Obama's speech

I thought a lot about what to say about today. About the incredible energy in our town, about explaining to a child what it is to weep with joy. About what I hope today can mean for us all. My former yoga teacher Savannah said it all so well, though, so you should read her post. :)

One other thing did really strike me, though, on a personal level. Maybe it's the post I did recently about Ellery and Olivia and the lovely comments and reactions I've had in response to it that have made it all fresh, but I found myself thinking about one of the biggest hurts of my life after the girls died. Work was the worst place in the world for me then--I hated the way people tiptoed around me, avoided me, never mentioned my daughters' names. I felt both invisible and like Hester Prynne all at once. It took me a while to realize that I was going to need to tell people what I needed, because grief paralyzes people until you show them a way around it. The absolute worst was watching a friend/colleague have her baby shower and celebrations of motherhood when my own motherhood and children had not been acknowledged, and I often thought (and still think) about how just a small gesture of recognition before her 'big day' would have made a world of difference to me. I really needed ALL the babies born that year to be celebrated, all the new mamas to be welcomed into the community of mothers. I think people did realize it later, and pulled together very lovely tributes, but it all happened four months after the girls were born and died, four months of very memorable agony. Four months of panic attacks, vomiting, uncontrollable sobbing. I lost 15 non-pregnancy lbs. in those months after the girls were born, actually, the grief was that physical. That October was the culmination; that moment of exclusion is the one thing I've had the hardest time forgiving and healing from. I still don't know that I've been able to, really. It was one very deep cut.

Why did I think on this today? Because I can't help but recognize how unbelievably classy it was that President Obama spent the night before his inauguration at an event honoring John McCain, and that Michelle Obama went out of her way to acknowledge Hillary Clinton on her way into the inauguration. Today could not have been an easy day for John McCain and Hillary Clinton. They worked tirelessly for years. They love their country. They threw all their passion into making today their big day, and when the day came it belonged to someone else. And there it was, the gesture. Before he had his day of glory, President Obama and our First Lady took the time to give the acknowledgment necessary to make the hurt of others a little less, to honor their struggle, to ease the bit of grief that surely must remain in their hearts. And that kind of understanding and action, my friends, is why the Obamas are going to rock our world.