Chronicles of Home: On Being Part of History

I was there. I was freezing and I was far away and I was watching on a Jumbotron, but I was there, and even when I'm 90, I'll get to say that I was there.

I was there largely because of my dear friend Becca, who lives 5 blocks from the Capitol, and who for whatever reason decided that, instead of renting her place out for $8,000+, she would instead let Sara and Kyle and I share her sleeping surfaces, free of charge.

Knowing that, without tickets, we weren't going to get anywhere close on the day of, we went and got burgers at Spike from Top Chef's burger joint on Monday night, then walked down to the mall to a.) make us feel better about our (really delicious) cholesterol consumption, b.) get as close as we could to the podium, and c.) try and get ourselves on MSNBC (we actually didn't try all that hard on the last one, just enough to get the picture).

The morning of, we rolled out of bed, put on our layers upon layers upon layers (below, my tights, two pair of socks, leggings, and jeans - and I still froze), stopped to stock up on coffee and breakfast sandwiches, and walked and walked and dodged and walked and skirted and walked and scaled road blocks and ran a little bit and walked and strategized and walked and picked out our bomb shelter in the event of a terrorist attack and walked and asked a police officer about the best entrance...to which he gave a perplexed and unhelpful, "There's...so many people. There's just...so many people."

An hour and a half later, we finally made it Into The Mall. We got a great little spot on a hill so that those of us vertically challenged had a view of the nearest Jumbotron. And then we had to waited and waited and sat down on the ground to gather the heat of those around us and waited and watched the children's choir sing for a really, really long time and waited.

There's no need for narration once everything started. You saw it, the world saw it. You probably saw it sooner and more accurately than we saw it, actually, seeing as there was a few second delay between the video and audio. There was energy, there was unity, there was pride, there was hope. It was real and it was tangible and it was freezing and it was fantastic.

And then we tried to leave. The thing about leaving is that, well, we couldn't. They did such an excellent job lining the periphery with port-a-potties that we couldn't find an open space anywhere. Best overheard comment:

"It must have been Bush's people that organized this. They love getting us into things they can't get us out of."

We went back to Becca's afterward, to warm ourselves with hot cider and mulled wine and listen to the commentary and celebrate our favorite commemorative finds. Mine? Definitely....these: