After a long time on the road we finally reached Ashburn, Virginia on Monday afternoon. We had made lunch plans with our friends who flew in from Texas and would be staying with us during the inauguration, but that was before being waylaid by weather in Wytheville, Virginia. What happened instead was that they made it to our lunch reservation and my wife and I dragged ourselves to the Metro stop in a late-day attempt to actually get into Washington, DC.
In the weeks running up to Obama’s inauguration, every front page carried at least one or two stories a day about how many people would Be There on January 20. I had assumed that these stories might actually serve to drive that number down a bit as people thought of standing in the freezing cold for eleven hours with strangers and no food and decided, instead, to witness history from the august environs of the couch. I was wrong.
At 3:00PM the day before the inauguration, the line to buy a ticket at the Vienna Orange Line Metro station in Virginia was about three hours long. After having had to engage in Mad Max-style road combat to get a parking spot, the only immediately apparent choice was to wait in a line that extended out of the station and almost to the highway.
Then my wife engineered an incredible time-saving solution, since the huge line was for buying tickets and not boarding trains: she figured it would actually take less time to take her old Metro ticket, hop on a city-bound train, go one stop, buy another ticket at another station that would hopefully have a smaller line than this commuter-heavy outlier, and then come back for me. Because of her, our journey to the city only took an hour and a half to begin.
***
Not long after, I had my first view of the National Mall. Like most Americans I am familiar with the color and the shape of the buildings and monuments in our nation’s capital, but seeing them in person for the first time cemented something in place inside me that not even thirty years of living and reading and learning and studying could do. Seeing Washington and Lincoln’s representations sit in opposition across that expanse finally brought it home to me that these men were real.
That sounds funny and as if I might have thought they were make-believe before I saw these statues, but that is not my meaning. Before walking in Washington, DC, those men existed for me in a very abstract way. I knew well enough that they had lived, that they had fought wars and held office and made speeches, and that they had died.
Now, exhausted after driving across a seemingly endless expanse of a relatively small portion of a vast country, I stood in the middle of the Mall near the Washington Monument on a very cold night, with the Capitol on one side of me and the Lincoln Memorial on the other. I understood that this was a city and a country built by men, not by legends. These were men who had doubts and failings and who suffered them and overcame them in mostly ordinary ways, and then through actions and ideas and speeches had carved a nation out of rock and earth, blood and bone and skin. Washington forged the United States and Lincoln saved them, and they were real men who had walked where I stood.
I wondered, as I stood there, if thinking about the history of the United States in means of such abstraction was a common affliction.
Two young girls walked by me while I was considering this. From their appearance and speech I placed them in high school. Both were bopping along until one stopped and did a double-take at the Lincoln Memorial.
“Oh my God! It’s that thing! That thing I was talking about! You know? For that guy?” she said to her companion, pointing across the Reflecting Pool.
“Cool,” her friend muttered. She was sending a text message.
They continued on their way, and my wife and I shared a laugh about it when they were gone.
****
The day of the inauguration was as much of a mess as you might think. The train lines were long, the stations were packed, the delays were huge. Had my band of travelers not been open to improvisation, we would have never made it onto the Mall. As an example: the Metro started running at 4:00 AM, and this was not early enough to accommodate everyone that wanted to ride it.
On the train in, my friends and I were packed tightly with everyone else, cheek to cheek like a Greek chorus, situated at the back end of the tailing car. An older African-American man was looking past my head and into the rest of the compartment with such intense concern that I was compelled to see if I could help.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, I’m just… I’m looking for my wife.”
I turned and looked into the crowd. “Is she…”
“She’s on this train. I just can’t see her.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, and we became fast friends. I have been on my share of subways and when they are packed to capacity it is usually an aggressive environment. Despite the massive overcrowding and delays on the transit system, I am happy to report that I did not hear a cross word or a muttered epithet.
The transit system in DC is solid, right down to the train conductors. Ours would make periodic announcements, letting us know that other trains were stopped farther up the tracks and thus blocking our progress from the outskirts of the city. As the delays increased, the announcements became more dramatic.
“My friends, things are bad. The trains are all full to capacity and the stations are being closed in a rotation to facilitate getting people in and out. I swear to you, we’re all going to get where we’re going.”
“Delays continue! But have faith. The stations are being closed and cleared and re-opened again and we will be on our way shortly. I promise we will make it through this.”
There was slight laughter from the passengers at this dispatch. After a few beats, the conductor keyed his mic on once more:
“Yes we can.”
We roared laughter and applauded. There are few substitutes for a good sense of humor or a man that takes joy in his job.
***
We made our way from the Foggy Bottom station towards the Mall, and the appearance of the Washington Monument in the distance showed us that we had no small amount of walking to do. As we set out I marveled at the amount of people making their way through the streets. It reminded me of Boston afternoons in the spring, when I would sit outside at a coffee shop on Boylston Street and watch people from all walks of life, all wearing Red Sox hats, making the trek on foot to Fenway Park.
There was no mystery as to our collective destination as we walked through the George Washington University campus with people in front of us and behind. Everyone was waving American flags or campaign signs. Many had availed themselves of the numerous merchandise opportunities and so if they were not wearing an Obama hat they were wearing an Obama something.
Once we got within the vicinity of the Mall, we turned off 23rd onto Virginia Avenue and crossed the street. Once there I wanted to turn around and see how far we had come, since it had been a sizable walk on a brisk morning and I am sappy by nature, so I wanted to try and remember every little detail.
When I turned around I was given an entirely different memory than I’d expected. A human sea swept up the hill and back into the city, advancing towards the park. Not an inch of street was unoccupied by people for as far as the eye could see, and the feeling I had was one of being punched in the chest. It was not like seeing something impossible or supernatural, but rather like seeing something that is perfectly plausible but totally unexpected.
***
Not long after we picked out our spot among the throngs and camped, the Mall was closed. We stood with two million of our closest friends and swapped stories and observations. This family was from New Jersey and wouldn’t let their children miss it; these college kids had driven even longer than us, making the trek from California. I heard languages from many nations, from German as we walked the path around the Washington Monument to Farsi as we made our way into the crowd, and Russian, Greek, French, Italian, and Portuguese as we navigated to our spot.
It was incredible. The Washington Post had a headline that morning – “The World Meets in Washington for Obama” – and here it was, everyone there to participate in a history that stood before us in the fluid present. As the ceremony began there was a great deal of cheering and singing and chanting. When the crowd would applaud, it was the muted slap of mittens against mittens and gloves against gloves. When the speakers began there was stony silence, save for during Obama’s address when people would shout out agreement or even encouragement.
During the speech there were tears. Some of them were mine. Part of it, of course, must be contributed to so many firsts: it was my first inauguration, my first time to DC, and my first time on the Mall, all of which were augmented by the enormity of the event. However, it was also a time of not-firsts, of another iteration of travel with my best friends, of another chance to see Obama speak live, of another political event of which I will forever be able to call myself a part.
Mostly, though, I think it was the fact that conflicting beliefs inside me were coming to terms with one another. When I have worked in politics in the past I have been cynical about campaigns and elections, continually weighing things in terms of cost-benefits analysis. Words alone, after all, do not fix problems.
Words do have a magic, though, that is necessary to fix most divides between human beings. When I voted for Obama during the primary, I did it for the very uncharacteristic and possibly irrational reason that he made me feel good. Now, at his inauguration, Obama was making a speech about the difficulties faced by America and the pragmatic approach it would take to resolve them. His speech was sober, and rather than being struck and swept away by rhetoric I felt emotionally unseated by adversity and the opportunity borne of it.
As we headed home, the mood did not dissipate. Despite being exhausted, everyone on the train joked and laughed. Parents talked to their kids about what they had just seen and spoke to each other about possibilities for the future. The train carried us back to Virginia, and I fell asleep, deep like a river stone.
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