Driving into the Chicago Botanic Gardens, I was relieved.
I had missed the freeway exit that led to the gardens and had to spend almost twenty minutes trying to figure out how to U-turn and make our way back to the gardens. After getting up early in the morning, Ethan fell asleep in his car seat, allowing us all a respite from his liveliness and energy.
As I drove toward the parking lot, the Circle Round podcast's calming sound played in the car bringing in a story from a culture not of my own but feeling familiar and comforting.
I noticed the kaleidoscope of light showered us as light streamed in through the changing fall leaves as I turned into the parking lot. I was looking forward to a good morning with my family. This had been a difficult week, but the weather had remained unseasonably warm, and the changing of fall leaves brought evolving beauty to the world.
And then Diana, in hushed excitement, told me, "Joe won, it's confirmed."
Diana had been reminding me all week that the mainstream media narrative was not giving the full picture of what was happening. It seemed like Biden was losing after Tuesday night, but he wasn't. The fact is that the mail-in ballots were going to swing towards Biden. The hope that Biden was going to win became fact on Friday even before major news outlets called it. By Friday, I accepted that the news organizations' final call was going to be a matter of time, and by Saturday, I was at peace with waiting. So when it happened, it didn't feel like a great moment or victory. It felt more like a relief.
Only a couple of other people were there as our boys ran around the open grassy field and the gently sloping hills. We reclined on the hills, felt the warmth of the sun, and let the children explore the space.
Lucas, who is just one month shy of a year old, got very determined to climb one of the hills. He had climbed up some of the smaller ones and, at one point, adorably lost his balance and rolled down the hill giggling as he landed in the soft grass. As he started climbing this larger hill, I reflected on his life. He has no idea who the president is or who the president will be. His world is his family, and with every place he goes, there is something new to experience, something new to see. The hill in front of him was enormous for him to climb for his size, but he was undeterred. Lucas saw something that he wanted to explore, and he was willing to persevere to get to the top.
When he almost got the top, he lost balance and fell on his side. He screamed out, and I rushed over to him, picked him up, and told him, "everything is going to be okay." As I put him down and watched him make it to the top, it felt like, for the first time in what felt like forever, that things were really going to be okay.
No comments:
Post a Comment