Paige: “I’m so happy!  Now we don’t have to move to Canada!”

Last night Paige and I watched the television news coverage of the election results.  We were both on edge of our seats at first but that quickly turned into hope when key battleground states started turning blue. Hope transitioned into disbelief (what? over so soon?) and was then quickly replaced by joy when we realized that McCain was conceding. When I turned to Paige after his concession speech she had tears streaming down her face at full force.

Now I have seen my daughter cry a lot over the last 14 years and from experience I have found that tears generally fall for the following three reasons:

1. I hate my mother because she an oppressive b*tch.
2. My friend, boyfriend, teacher, [fill in blank] looked at me funny or said something nasty and now my life is over.
3. I twisted my ankle playing sports and now must have my leg amputated.

In 14 years I have never seen Paige cry tears of joy.  It was pretty moving to witness and suffice to say, brought me down into the ugly cry myself. When I inquired about why she was crying, she said it was because she was so happy.  The tears were flowing because she now feels as though she has some hope for the future. And that anything was possible for her as a bi-racial child (Obama is half-white like me!).

After the waterworks started to subside (on both sides) I asked Paige what she was feeling.  She said she had been feeling as though the Earth might not survive the span of her lifetime and there was no hope planning for the future.  She was terrified the war would never end.  And most importantly, she was so worried that if McCain became President, he wouldn’t even care about her generation (he doesn’t even know what text is!).

You must understand, Paige was the most ardent Obama supporter. She insisted that I hand deliver my absentee ballot instead of mailing it (voter fraud!).  She reminded me a number of times to take it to the drop box yesterday morning … a even sent me a text message from school to make sure I had done it. When I let her fill in the bubbles on the absentee ballot I thought it was giving her a lesson in civic responsibility, but I now realize that I also gave her a sense of control over her own future. We not only cast of vote for Obama, but we cast a vote for her own destiny.  In her mind, she is Obama too.

And she is at the ready to cast her own vote in 2012.