Stress Release

The first African American has been elected President of the United States and my brother has shingles. This says a lot about how our family handles stress. I spent the night sick to my stomach with worry, taking a walk as the poll results trickled in, unable to sit down for anything length of time. I wrung my hands. I chewed my fingernails. I thought about calling my parents, but knew my practical and pragmatic mother would be politically pessimistic and skeptically cautious.

We spent the early evening with our neighbor up the street -- a Clinton delegate who had no doubt Obama would win. I called my brother and gave him homeopathic remedies for his shingles, commiserating with him while explaining how I survived the nerve pain and oozing blisters. When Obama was declared the winner in Pennsylvania, I took my first breath of the evening, but I still held onto the couch cushions with two fists, my knee bouncing up and down like a needle on a sewing machine.

I tried to eat -- pizza, Waldorf salad, and a brownie. I worried as the pundits dissected and interpreted, filled in air space and combed through the results like 10 year old boys counting their marbles. Living on the West Coast, we watched at the top of every hour to see more numbers flow in -- a wave of decision that still seemed uncertain. When Obama reached 207 electoral votes, we reassured each other that the West Coast would put him over and then all the stations went to commericial.

We ate some more. We laughed a little. We teased our neighbor's housemate -- a very young Saudi man who joked that his country could not vote as we do. "They no intelligent enough, yes?" he offered. And in the middle of our discussion about monarchy versus democracy, the number of brothers the Saudi king had and who would take his place, the news came back on and all of the sudden, just like that, in the blink of the eye, Obama was declared the winner.

The sound was down on the television, but I read the words on the television. "You guys, look! It says Obama is the 44th president." No one looked. Everyone kept talking. "Look!" I implored and then hit the mute button to activate the sound. At that point everyone watched and listened and within seconds cheered loudly. Our cheers were echoed in the streets of our neighborhood and fireworks blasted in the sky from the neighbors down the street.

We walked out onto the porch and every neighbor, EVERY neighbor stood on their lawns, on their porches, in front of their houses in the middle of the street and cheered. We are a neighborhood of diversity -- white, black, Asian, Hispanic, poor, wealthy, and middle class, gay and straight. We are all very different in more invisible ways, but there we were, all cheering for the same thing. At the end of the block, the drug dealing gangsters carried each other on their shoulders and danced in the streets. At the other end of the block, gay white men hugged each other and talked on their cell phones.

It was a moment. It was a moment I will never forget.

Eventually, we all went back into the house and more fireworks exploded over us. "The dog," I thought and we walked home to be greeted by a nervous, anxious puppy who, though excited to see us, shivered and shuttered and refused to go outside to take care of his business. We found ourselves on the couch again, the dog quivering under our legs, watching Obama's acceptance speech. We cried. We held hands. We stroked the the nervous dog and cried some more.

And we laughed about the absolute beauty of Michelle Obama.

The phone rang. This is a longer story and one I will not tell in detail, but on the phone was a neighbor who lives a block over and whose house I pass every day on my walk. She is an older black woman, full of life and energy though she walks as if the world has weighed on her back far too long. I'd offered her a ride to the polls, but she stopped there on her way home from work. Still, over the weeks and months we'd forged a friendship talking about politics and dogs, about a history of struggle and the changes in the neighborhood.

On the phone last night she said, "We can all breathe now. Praise Jesus, we can all breathe again." We talked. We remembered the past. We both sent out prayers -- hers perhaps more powerful than mine -- to keep Obama safe, to protect his family from harm, to begin the process of healing this nation. When I hung up the phone, I cried.

I feel lighter this morning. I have much to do - 4 dogs to walk, including our own, a house to clean, a business license to apply for, and billing to settle. But no longer do I need to scan the internet for the latest polls, no longer do I need to avoid politcal ads, no longer do I need to worry that Sarah Palin is a heartbeat away from the presidency. And soon, no longer will I have to listen to the fearful, arrogant voice of W.

What a relief.