O<\/span>n one of the countless nights I spent in my dad\u2019s arms looking over his shoulder at the vast landscape of his political paraphernalia, I said my first word: \u201cbutton.\u201d The senators, representatives and presidents, who I imagined kept donkeys and elephants as pets, were like friends who smiled and waved at me. After a disastrous cropped haircut, my mom stitched \u201cI am a girl\u201d on the front of a tight orange cap before sending me off to preschool, but she had to do no such thing to remind me of my political affiliation. I called the mean kids at school gerrymanderers.<\/p>\n

My dad taught political science for thirty-seven years and wrote constitutional law textbooks. Before I was born, he served as the County Commissioner of my hometown. For over ten years he managed the campaign of Mary Brown, our local state representative. He was a different sort of politician, if you could call him a politician. He was a different sort of man.<\/p>\n

When my dad discussed politics, he\u2019d set down his pen or fork or papers and his hands would join the conversation, rolling over terrain the way a mountain goat navigates a craggy hillside. He\u2019d explain and weigh and listen, and he\u2019d always find a way to give the political process the benefit of the doubt. The purity with which he loved the experiment of politics, even when it exploded and made a mess, made me believe him. I used to tell him he should run for president. The older I got, the more serious I became about this\u2014I don\u2019t know anyone who wouldn\u2019t have voted for my dad and for the tangible and mighty force of his goodwill.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

He had an uncanny ability to predict politics\u2014the nature of an October surprise, who\u2019d be elected and by how much, which platforms would be compelling to whom. He kept an elaborate spreadsheet of local and state races and used his own system to calculate each candidate\u2019s odds of winning, buying and trading buttons accordingly. Every election season, he gave interviews on local television and radio stations.<\/p>\n

Election Day used to be a holiday for me. Like other children anticipated slumber parties and birthdays, I counted down to the first Tuesday in November. On election nights, my dad would take me to Mary Brown’s house, where graph paper covered the walls like giant crossword puzzles, precincts named and numbered, percentages scrawled in a politician\u2019s hieroglyphics. I’d sit at the top of the stairs and watch people fill in numbers, answer phones, rush about. The whole scene crackled, especially if there was a presidential race underway (George Bush\u2019s succession of Reagan didn\u2019t dampen our spirits due to complete lack of surprise; Clinton\u2019s defeat of Bush lead to the kind of exhausted partying that I\u2019d heard happened in college after finals). Mary Brown’s elections were every two years, and she never lost.<\/p>\n

After midnight I\u2019d hear the clapping, my dad would hoist me onto his shoulders and I\u2019d shake hands as if I were the new President. Dad and I wouldn\u2019t leave until late; I learned I could fall asleep standing up if I leaned against something. The numbers on the dashboard were almost unrecognizable, shocking and brazen in their glowing announcement that we were closing in on three a.m. He\u2019d let me stay home from school the next day; we\u2019d watch game shows and eat Grape Nuts.<\/p>\n

I was in a campaign ad with Mary Brown when I was seven. We walked in Milham Park and fed bread to the ducks while a calm voice narrated her policies. Once, during the annual Doo Dah Parade, Mary Brown rode a donkey and waved at the crowd while Dad, clad in a pair of overalls with a patch over the seat, walked behind her, shoveling the mess into a burlap bag. I think he enjoyed shucking his khakis for farmer gear as much as we enjoyed seeing him that way. He wasn\u2019t above getting his hands dirty, wasn\u2019t above any job with a purpose.<\/p>\n

When I turned sixteen, I got two jobs\u2014one at a donut mill and the other working for the Kalamazoo Democratic Party. I canvassed for the man who succeeded Mary Brown as state representative, as well as for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate. I wanted to contribute to the system my dad had spent his life studying and helping to power, to expand my link to him into something adult and important.<\/p>\n

I wanted my involvement in the process to be meaningful, but I was still a kid. One night while driving with some friends, I noticed a neighborhood full of Republican yard signs. I yelled at the owners from inside the car, pointing out the weak spots in the Republican policies and extolling the virtues of the Democratic candidates. My friends got caught up in the moment\u2014they believed what I believed, just as I believed what my dad believed\u2014and we decided we needed to make a statement. We thought we could do something important and for the greater good while demonstrating the passionate rebellion of the 60s that our parents still celebrated. We drove to a supermarket, bought black spray paint, and defaced the yard signs. The police who caught us were perplexed\u2014they\u2019d never before apprehended vandals bent only on making political statements. My friends left me to explain our actions to the police and to our parents.<\/p>\n

My dad, typically not one to permit illegality or irresponsibility, listened to my explanation and apology, and after I promised never to do it again and to respect other people\u2019s opinions, as wrong as they might seem, he hugged me and whispered in my ear that he was proud. He sensed political adrenaline and recognized that we were banging on the door of a process we had only begun to understand. He knew that the important thing was that we were moved.<\/p>\n

My dad was a politician from a generation that revered the President. When he was a teenager, people lined up along the boulevard to wave at Eisenhower\u2019s motorcade, thrilled simply to be that close to power and greatness. He spoke of those days with nostalgia, which I grabbed hold of when George Bush was elected and, for so many of us, the U.S. presidency became something of a joke.<\/p>\n

In 2000, I was living in Ireland. I went to sleep at 7:00 a.m. after the networks pronounced Al Gore victorious. I thought I was still dreaming when I awoke a few hours later to a red map and a picture of Bush\u2019s grinning face. Like everyone else, I couldn\u2019t figure out what had happened or how or why. Dad went on TV and radio stations to provide insight and explanations, to try and predict what would happen now. The interviewers weren\u2019t looking for prognostication. I think they just wanted him to say that he hadn\u2019t lost faith in the system, that it wouldn\u2019t fall apart.<\/p>\n

Across the pond, I was accosted by anyone who discerned that I was American. Shopkeepers, waitresses, mailmen, people on the DART demanded to know what had happened and why. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with you?\u201d some of them asked. I didn\u2019t answer. I couldn\u2019t. I didn\u2019t know. I\u2019d mumble feeble excuses about how I\u2019d voted absentee for Gore and I\u2019d apologize and stumble away. The more I traveled, the more confusion and anger I encountered, from the anti-American graffiti in Budapest bathroom stalls to the articles in European magazines. When some Canadians I traveled with gave me some maple leaf pins, I wore them and let foreigners assume I was Canadian.<\/p>\n

I sent my dad lengthy emails describing the situations I encountered. I wanted him to tell me that everything was going to be okay, that Bush\u2019s questionable election didn\u2019t mean that America had crossed a point of no return. Instead of being upset, Dad was curious about how the process would play out. We\u2019re a relatively young country, he said. We need to make mistakes, we need to be confused, and we need to test the system and see it triumph and reset its course.<\/p>\n

Four years later I watched from Canada as we kept Bush in office. The vitriol I experienced from Canadians dwarfed that from Europeans. Canadians generally accept, though resentfully, the \u201ctrickle-up effect\u201d\u2014whatever happens in the U.S. eventually seeps north across the border. Some Canadians argue that they should be able to vote for our president, since it directly affects them. The comments in the weeks after the election permeated classrooms, lunchrooms, CBC broadcasts, bus station vestibules. Four years earlier, I\u2019d been able to tell myself that Europeans didn\u2019t hate Americans; they resented our government and politics. But when we reelected Bush, we could no longer argue that our administration wasn\u2019t an extension of us as people. We\u2019d kept ourselves in the mess. We\u2019d invited the wrath.<\/p>\n

I felt as if I\u2019d swallowed a cannonball. I called my dad. \u201cHow can you have faith in this system?\u201d I asked him. Last time was bad enough, but this? Didn\u2019t he feel as though the entire system had slapped him in the face? How could he create meaning from his life\u2019s work, given the blatant disregard for the values he held dear?<\/p>\n

When I finished, he chuckled and said, \u201cYou\u2019re far too young to be so jaded.\u201d \u201cAren\u2019t you?\u201d I asked him. \u201cNah,\u201d he said, as though the landscape was still easy to navigate. I had expected him to admit that he was putting his political beliefs on the table for reexamination, but he didn\u2019t. He told me that politics moves like the economy\u2014it ebbs and flows, spikes and plummets and cycles around and around. He admitted that yes, this was a low point, but that as with most nadirs, it would usher in something amazing.<\/p>\n

Had this response come from anyone else, I might have dismissed it as Pollyannaism. But because it came from him, I listened. And deep down where I wasn\u2019t terrified to hope, I believed him.<\/p>\n

Despite the frustration and sadness, there was a political bright spot in 2004. We both watched the Democratic National Convention and I said to him, \u201cHow about that Obama guy?\u201d When I asked where he was from, what his story was, my dad told me. He had all of Obama\u2019s senatorial campaign buttons and had been following his trajectory since 1997. He also had some idea where Obama was going. \u201cKeep your eye on that fellow,\u201d he said to me.<\/p>\n

I pulled Dreams from my Father<\/em> off my dad\u2019s bookshelf the summer before the 2008 election, just before I moved from Kalamazoo to Boston. It had been two years since I\u2019d moved back to my hometown, trying to fill\u2014or at least not feel utterly consumed by\u2014the gaping hole where my dad used to be. I read the book knowing that I would soon put distance between me and the rest of the family, this town and its familiar hospitals, and in some ways, the man I am still looking for. I read most of the book in my old bedroom in the untried silence of late afternoon, leaning back in the big gold chair with my feet propped on the desk, in his old stance.<\/p>\n

Dreams<\/em> is not a political rags to riches story; it\u2019s the story of humanity unfolding. Most politicians don\u2019t stop to take spiritual journeys. They don\u2019t have time, or they think it\u2019s for pansies, or it never occurs to them. They don\u2019t cultivate much beyond business acumen, shrewd political strategies, and networking skills. They don\u2019t do walkabouts.<\/p>\n

This is why Dreams<\/em> resonated so deeply with me. Obama\u2019s journey has at times been sloppy and painful, and movement has not always been forward. He unapologetically recalls being a kid, a teenager who sometimes did well in school and sometimes didn\u2019t, and then a college student who got drunk and smoked pot and tried blow. Obama doesn\u2019t hide from any iteration of himself, nor does he hide from us. We\u2019ve all looked in some unlikely as unproductive places as we groped in dark for a light switch, a foothold, anything that might orient us and make sense of the world. Like my dad, he knows how necessary it is to ask who and what we are, what we believe, what part we play in it all; he knows that we can\u2019t pursue the answers without pushing limits and, sometimes, screwing up. Obama\u2019s trajectory as a politician and a person is neither linear nor simple\u2014like a winding river, it splits into tributaries that continue to veer and grow and then, somehow, wind back around and meet back up again, forces joining.<\/p>\n

Reading about Obama\u2019s fearless self-exploration and the subsequent payoffs confirmed my belief that the search for answers is endless and often messy, and that in many ways, the search itself is the answer. His story filled me with a renewed sense of confidence and purpose at a time of consuming anticipation and anxiety, when I stood below humid clouds that presage a thunderclap, preparing to start my life again. For the first time since Dad died, I found myself thinking that maybe I\u2019d come out of this okay after all. Maybe more than okay. Although it wasn\u2019t fully reintegrated into my life or my lexicon just yet, I could conceive of hope.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel my father\u2019s presence as\u2026I walk through the busy street. I see him\u2026hear him in the laughter\u2026The Old Man\u2019s here, I think.\u201d ~ <\/em>Barack Obama, Dreams from my Father<\/em><\/p>\n

On Tuesday, November 4, 2008, the story of my father kicked up like a breeze, gently at first, and then more insistent, rustling my insides, making noise.<\/p>\n

I went to a returns party with some colleagues. Everyone ate cheese and crackers and drank wine with confident conviviality as the electoral count grew more and more promising\u2014Pennsylvania turned blue, then Virginia. Phones buzzed nonstop as people flitted around, circling the furniture as if they were playing a high stakes game of musical chairs. My palms sweat and my heart swung wildly in my chest. I was more invested in the election than I had been in anything since Dad got sick; it was far too late to prevent myself from hoping. I left before the official announcement because I had to be alone when it came.<\/p>\n

I went home, turned on CNN, and sat on the edge of the couch, bathed in the glow of cathode rays. Ohio turned blue. Wolf Blitzer stopped talking to holograms and called it. Something opened inside me and I cried like a dam bursting.<\/p>\n

I rode my bike to the Boston Commons, to what felt like a city-wide birthday party. People danced under the streetlights, swinging each other around as though they were in a musical\u2014unfettered and unabashed, radiant. The triumph was so thick I could curl my hands around it and hang on tight. Some of my students danced in the fray. Senator John Kerry rode by and yelled from the window, \u201cBarack wants you to be responsible and safe!\u201d and the kids cheered\u2014they\u2019d do anything Obama said.<\/p>\n

Old, young, black, white, homeless, rich\u2014all equalized that night. All the stories Obama found as he visited families and congregations, all those woes he sought out because they presented something tangible to soothe, gathered up to dance with other people\u2019s stories, all the histories brewing up one big storm. For a night, rapture removed people from their struggles and guilts and regrets and replaced them with movement and hope.<\/p>\n

I tried to summon my dad. I closed my eyes and cleared my mind to make space for a response\u2014James Taylor playing on a passing car radio, a shooting star, that feeling of him right behind me. I tipped my head to the sky and asked, \u201cAre you watching this?\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama knows what it means to search, both in the world and inside himself, for a lost father. He knows what it means to be defined by someone\u2019s absence. My father was more of a presence for me than Obama\u2019s was for him; my dad helped me search for answers, whereas his was the source of many of the questions that prompted searching. Still, both of our fathers made us want to look, and looking is what gives us stories to tell.<\/p>\n

The night Obama was elected president, I overturned thirty years of personal philosophy by choosing to believe that not only was my dad still around somehow, but that he knew what was happening. I decided to believe that he was doing the afterlife equivalent of drinking a beer, eating popcorn and watching this thing unfold. Perhaps Obama imagines his doing the same, cheering dreams like race horses, applauding when they cross the line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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