Audacity and Hope

Jenn Chase and her children, Mariama and Amadou meet then candidate Obama, June 2008.

Election Day 9:17 A.M.

(2008)

 TRAGIC HOPE, OR ESPERENZA TRAGICA, IS A CENTRAL IDEOLOGY of one of my favorite playwrights, Antonio Buero Vallejo. My understanding of its premise is that pain is a necessary step toward peace and the ultimate realization of a dream: happiness. I still have it. I can keep it, too, for the remaining hours of the day. 

I load my children into the car. Lately, I have successfully fought my temptation to turn on NPR until after they board their school bus. I realized that, in an attempt to keep up with the campaign and the daily horrific casualties of the war, I had been tuning in to NPR from 6:15 a.m. and tuning them out at the breakfast table, normally an important part of our day and a tradition I’ve kept since my soon-to-be 19-year old was in her early years of grade school, as my youngest kids are now. But today, Election Day, I succumb to my temptation and immediately turn on NPR as we drive to their morning chorus practice at school. I wear my Obama pin, with the word “HOPE” on the bottom. I wonder if the “tragic” part of HOPE has already been fulfilled in the previous generations’ painful disappointments, injustices and violence launched at minorities.

I look in the rearview mirror to make sure that my 8-year-old daughter, Mariama, and 6-year old son, Amadou are buckled in. They assume that the candidate Mama chose—whom they both met earlier in the year— is the good guy who will win. They wear their pins “Barack to the Future” and “Super Obama,” respectively.

They seem unaware, so far, of their differences from the mainstream, or of their similarities to our candidate. Like Obama, they are brown. Like Obama, they have an African father whom they haven’t seen since his return to Africa when they were babies. And like Obama, their father is Muslim. They, like Obama, have a white, American mother who believes that the key to realizing one’s dreams is an education. And they, like Obama, have been raised mostly by her and their white relatives. Today they assume all is going to go well.

“So, Mama, I’m now on book two of Lemony Snicket’s series,” Mariama reports. “The writer says in the beginning, ‘This book isn’t going to have a happy ending, but nothing is preventing you from putting the book down and reading another one with a happy ending.’ At the end, it started to have a happy ending, but it turned into a horrible ending and the writer said, ‘See I warned you in the beginning that there wasn’t going to be a happy ending, and told you to go find another book!’” She seems amused and intrigued by the witty challenges the writer directs her way. I block out the rest of Mariama’s summary. I feel guilty about it, hoping that she won’t notice my absent gaze and periodic nods. I tune instead to the familiar voice of Karen Fagans from our local public radio station and the horrifying report that a School Board vote last night rejected a petition to change the name of Nathank B. Forrest High School. The report cited an “overwhelming vote” to keep the name, honoring the Confederate genral and most notably one of the founding members of the Ku Klux Klan. I’m completely floored. I had assumed without question that no thinking person could possibly find a defense for keeping the name, an honor and tribute to an individual who represents hate and horror to so many of our citizens.

It’s been a little more than 15-months now since summer of 2007 when I was questioned publicly by y boyfriend’s family in Madrid about my choice for a political candidate. I had abandoned hope for my country’s possibility of recovery from the injustices of the 2000 “election,” the war, and, even more appalling, the re-election of 2004. I sat at the head of the restaurant table, under the scrutinizing eyes of two generations of Spaniards, a little more than a couple of decades removed from the death of a fascist dictator who ruled Spain for almost 40 years. I responded that I didn’t have a candidate; I had given up hope. I watched the disappointment on their faces. I planned not to participate, I explained in my lame, stumbling attempt at speaking Spanish. At that time there was pressure to support Hillary Clinton. I believed that until we have a true multi-party system that we cannot have real democracy. The either/or thing wasn’t cutting it anymore. In late fall of 2007, an NPR interview with a waitress who had been hoisted up into the spotlight by the Clinton campaign as a poster child of the kind of person that she was fighting for, when pressed for endorsement, reluctantly responded that she had given up hope. She didn’t think Clinton represented her. Yes. She was a college graduate and single mother who had to work two waitress jobs to feed her three boys. But when her boss announced the Clinton camp’s meals were on the house, they paraded out of the restaurant neglecting to leave a tip for their poster child. The message was loud and clear. Clinton didn’t really get it.

As Obama began to emerge, a strong competitive candidate, I was unconsciously revitalized. The energy, honesty, and charisma were all backed up by a man of principle, a man who had the guts to make a very unpopular stance against the war. I changed course. I noticed, though that there was a reluctance from my African- American friends to smile, to cheer, to be vocal. I couldn’t understand it. There was hesitation, composed discretion.

As my eyes make contact with African- American parents and teachers at my children’s school, I see the same distance. I feel the hesitation, separation. The early morning report of Nathan B. Forrest High School and the “overwhelming” vote to keep its name rings in my ears. I look down and avert my eyes, ashamed at my audacious ignorance. I begin to understand. By tomorrow morning, we’ll know. But either way, there is the knowledge that the hesitation to celebrate is justified. There may be more tragica in our esperenza, more pain to continue hope. But a President Obama will alleviate some of that pain and encourage movement forward. My eyes burn as I contemplate my daughter’s Lemony Snicket’s quote: “I warned you that there wasn’t going to e a happy ending, nothing was stopping you from putting down this book and finding another one.”

I swallow a huge lump in my throat, pull up in my driveway, and remain in my car to listen to the Nathan B. Forrest High School report again.