week 34
I finally tested negative for Covid, I finally didn’t have a fever, but the exhaustion was real. Add starting a new school year, already a week behind and having to push through mental fog, chest pains, shortness of breath and fatigue, and there was nothing I wanted to do except collapse at the end of each day.
Then I found out I got tickets to “The Colbert Show,” which was coming to Chicago for the DNC week. I had forgotten I put my name into the lottery system weeks ago, and they emailed me that I had gotten selected to wait in line and hope I actually get a seat. It was a chance for an incredible experience that I did not want to miss… except that all I wanted to do was go home and sleep. I couldn’t give away the tickets as they were in my name and so I had to be present. Either I went and took someone with me, or nobody I knew would be going.
My mom and I struggled to stand upright through the lines, fully masked and fully exhausted, her struggling with her knees and me struggling with energy and breathing. It was one of the rare summer nights in Chicago that is actually cool without being cold, and we managed to get in and crawl to our seats two and a half hours later. It was 8:30 and the show wouldn’t begin for at least another two hours. We entered the theater to see three huge screens playing the live coverage of the DNC, just three miles away from us. We started to hear some cheers as other people found their seats, and we weren’t sure if they were coming from the convention or our theater. And then we heard some more cheers, definitely coming from our theaters. And then, Michelle Obama took the stage, and we were all silent.
“Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn’t it? You know, we’re feeling it here in this arena, but it’s spreading across this country we love. A familiar feeling that has been buried too deep for far too long. You know what I’m talking about. It’s the contagious power of hope.”
When I think of the word ‘hope,’ I am taken back to my freshman year in high school. In English class we were reading long stories about horrifically hard journeys, some classic myths like The Odyssey, some more modern tales like Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, first published in 1958. I got called on one day by my teacher, who asked if there is a point in hope when facing harrowing atrocities in the world. “I don’t ever think you should give up hope,” I said, to immediate snickering around me. It was the first time I really felt stupid not just in front of a teacher, but before my peers. I felt naive, embarrassed, and just plain dumb. I don’t remember what my classmates jumped in to say, but I remember the tone was cynical and jaded, and everyone seemed so much older than fourteen— or I felt so much younger than fourteen. This was fall semester of my freshman year of high school, and George W. Bush was about to get elected for his second term. Had I known what would happen by my fall semester of my freshman year of college— when I would vote for the first time in a presidential election for a candidate who ran largely on the idea of hope— maybe I could have been comforted that my answer wasn’t the stupidest thing to ever come out of anyone’s mouth ever.
He had a little something to say about hope.
But there were so, so many times in high school when I had felt stupid for hoping. There were so many times before high school when I’d felt stupid for hoping. There were so many times after high school when I felt stupid for hoping. There were so many times in the last twelve months that I have felt so incredibly stupid for hoping. The feeling of “false hope” that I have experienced with every pregnancy loss. The feeling that hope only leads to being devastatingly let down. The feeling of hopelessness when hearing about politics and the division within my party. Hope can feel so terrifying that it can be easier to just go numb and shut off the hope valve completely.
But Michelle had our attention. There was silence, and then there were our cheers. She spoke of mourning of the dimming of hope, her own personal grief with the loss of her mother. She discussed what is at stake in education, in the economy, with human rights. Michelle spoke about protecting reproductive rights and having her own daughters through IVF.
“We cannot indulge our anxieties about whether or not our country will elect someone like Kamala, instead of doing everything we can to get Kamala elected.” Hope is scary. But it seems like it’s the only way forward, and the thing we carry to get us “to be the solution that we seek.” We must “do something.” There was pure magic in the air that night, and I think it’s still around.
The legendary former first lady left us with this reminder: “We have the power to marry our hope with our action.”
“Hope is making a comeback.”