To my beautiful wife,
I know you did your best to stay out of this, to pretend it didn’t matter, that you weren’t paying attention. I know you did this to protect yourself from bitter disappointment. You were scared to believe that America would actually come through, that the majority of the majority of this country would actually walk into that booth and pull that level for Barack Obama. (Well, we didn’t...but enough of us did.)
Baby, I can only guess what this means to you. I know what it means to me. It doesn’t mean that racial relations in America will be wonderful overnight. It doesn’t mean that we won’t get stared at when we go out to dinner. In fact, I’d bet it means that hardcore racism is going to bubble up and spill over for a minute or two. But I’d also bet that America has just stated in no uncertain terms that this will no longer be tolerated in THIS country.
Maybe it doesn’t mean as much as we would want it to now, but it’ll mean the world to our kids and their kids and their kids. Every child in this country can now truly believe that anything is possible. Every child born in the world can look at us and say, "In America, anything is possible." We really can live up to our ideal self-image when we truly want to, when we finally see that we have to become who we say we are. America did that last night. We did that.
I know you cried last night. I did too. Hell, I’m crying right now. It kills me to be two time zones away on such a special day, but I hope and trust you’ll remember today as the best birthday of your life. Because even though I couldn’t be there, me and "my friends" around the country got together and gave you something truly wonderful. I love this country, I love my new President-ELECT, but most of all, I love you.
Happy Birthday Baby!