Way back in November, as the polls were closing and the realization that a new day was near, Wifey and I said we would be "there." "There" of course was the National Mall for the inauguration of Barack Obama. Living in the D.C. metro area provides us with a wealth of opportunity. We have world-class museums, often free of charge. We have restaurants, theater, music, comedy, national events, all within 11 miles of our house. However, living here also affords us a great deal of realism. We understand what it means to sit in hours of gridlock, traffic of epic proportions, delays on our substandard mass transit system that just can not move the amount of people who sometimes need to be moved.
All of those things collided this week as we realized that it would just be absolutely insane to try to get downtown for the ceremony. Even though this is a once in a lifetime opportunity we thought it would be wrong for us to try to drag our kids down there in single digit (wind chill puts it at a balmy 8 degrees) temperatures.
So as I sit in my office at work, enjoying a nice hot beverage and eating my breakfast, I watch the CNN newsfeed and all these jubilant but freezing people down on the Mall. I mourn my nonattendance but I realize that it was a good choice.
Good luck Mr. Obama, and stay warm.
2 comments:
There's a huge part of me that wishes we had thrown caution to the wind, but knowing myself and our children, I'm 100% positive that the day would have ended with everyone feeling crabby, freezing, exhausted and all-in-all BAD. So, I hope that instead, the kids and I will sit by the warm fire and cheer for President Obama in our small crowd of 4. :)
I wish I could've been there too, but we all did the right thing :)
Post a Comment