"What are your thoughts about tomorrow's election?"
The above sentence is as far as I got yesterday. Dammit. Well, I posted for 4 days in a row. A new record. But here I am before 8am the next day, making up for yesterday's missed post. That's still pretty good.
Instead of writing about how I feel about THIS election (which to sum up is NERVOUS), I want to write about 2008. 2008 was supposed to be my year. Why? 8 is my favorite and lucky number. Its the number I always pick if I use "I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10." I always use 8 for the lottery. I even like getting eights when I play poker or blackjack (which is also irrational and stupid unless you get 3 or 4 of them in poker). So 2008 would be MY YEAR. Great things would happen. In other words, I would SURELY get pregnant and give birth to a real live baby. These are the types of things crazy people who have trouble getting pregnant think.
We lost our baby in March of 2007. 2007 was the worst year of my life. SO bad, I don't even really remember anything that happened after March. But I do remember that on New Year's Eve night my husband and I hugged with tears in our eyes, and I was thinking "Thank God that year is over. Let this next one be better." And a part of me believed that it would be. Things just had to turn around. Right?
Yeah right. 2008 proved to be pretty tough as well. We started trying to get pregnant again in the summer of 2007 and it didn't happen month after month. By 2008, we were concerned and went in to see a fertility doctor. We discovered that I had "old ass eggs" for my age and they recommended that we do fertility treatments. We were about to start those treatments in April when I got pregnant. And to make a long story short - I had a miscarriage. Which turned out to be a pretty long and drawn out process and tough on me physically (I think the fact that it was also tough emotionally goes without saying). Meanwhile everyone and their mother was getting pregnant and having babies. 2008 was turning out to NOT be my year.
I also started a new teaching job in the fall that was incredibly difficult, stressful and time-consuming. So we decided that baby-making via fertility treatments would have to wait until 2009. So no baby in 2008. So much for my lucky number.
But election night 2008 was amazing. A friend of mine had a party (I made Barack-li salad). Greg and I wore our Obama shirts. We brought champagne. If I remember correctly, they called the election soon after the west coast polls closed. And I was VERY happy about that. We cheered and danced and popped open our champagne bottles. It was great. To be honest, I voted for Hillary Clinton in the primary but I fully supported Obama in the general. After 8 looooonnnnnngggg years of President Bush I was ready for a change. DESPERATE for a change. And the thought of Sarah Palin being next in line to the presidency was truly terrifying.
But what I remember most is watching Obama give his acceptance speech. We all stood there, silent, tears in our eyes. It wasn't just that "my guy" had won. It was so much bigger than that. This was history happening right before my eyes. I voted for the first black president. And he won. Wow. I thought of what this meant for our country and for so many people, in ways that I could never understand. I thought of many of my students and so many little children seeing this happen. It was wonderful. It may sound cliche, but I felt so hopeful.
It was the highlight of an otherwise shitty year.
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