Thing one: OMFG President Obama. I almost* cried last night but couldn't, because my body has hijacked every molecule of water remaining left in it to make saliva. Not that I hate it or anything.
Thing two: things got better with the whole full body invasion of symptomatic side effects and then they got worse again. Guess where we are now. I've decided I'm not going to talk about it because I sense that most people find it boring and trite and possibly more than a little annoying. And then I'm likely to get onto a wooden soap box and let loose about the unrealistic and quite frankly maddening social expectation that women who are pregnant are supposed to be glowing and happy and absolutely vibrating with joy. And if you aren't, if you are, say, tired and sick and tired of being sick and tired of people looking at you weird because you have to walk through the grocery store spitting into a hand towel because lord with no mercy the freaking saliva, that somehow implies that you are going to eat your children with fries and ketchup. And you know what? I really resent that. But I'll work that one out later and spare you the diatribe. For now.
Thing three: I've been missing New York albeit in a strange and subtle way. Mostly I miss the things you can buy, purchase or have access to. Namely chinese delivery and any other place to shop besides K-Mart. Last night, however, I really missed New York. I sat in the study of our big, cozy farm house house, siting beneath the old wood and plaster beams, listening to the election on podcast radio and wishing I were in Brooklyn. Envisioning the amazed and joyful faces of everyone at my old hospital, wanting to be precisely right there in this moment in time, this incredible part of history. I wanted to be embraced by the Jamaican nurses and get another 'Sup white girl from the security guard. I wanted to squeeze Miss Adam's hand as we passed in the darkened, dirty hallways, I wanted to hug to janitor on the fourth floor with the bright eyes who always opened doors for me, say hell yeah to the cafeteria clerk with his thin dread locks and knitted cap. I wanted to be back there then, right now, today. The world is immeasurably different today than it was just yesterday and from where I am in Northern New England it feels dampened, distant. I miss the pulse, I miss the pulp and flesh and grit of it and want, for now, just for this moment, to be back in it once again.
*Upon further review I believe the word almost gravely misrepresents my emotions on the night of November 4th --- a hazy solution of elation, disbelief, immense relief, immense and unspoken fear for the life of this incredible, important person, exhaustion, extreme nausea and heartburn. Looking back on it now, when someone asks me where I was when Obama was elected President I will be able to recall vividly our little house, our little study, in the white and rural backdrop of New Hampshire. And, looking back on it even now, I wish we had made more of an effort to be with humanity in that moment, to be connected, and complete. We don't even own a television (because we are stubborn liberal intellectual elitists and aren't we sorry now). I'll go back and youtube the visuals when the world first found out but I do feel as if one of the most important parts of this election, the humanity, happened without us.
