Our Future is Right In Front of Us

My daughter, McKenna, is six and a half going on 18. Her fascination with politics began about a year ago when she overheard my mom and I discussing why we preferred different candidates, my mother with Hillary and me with Barack. McKenna asked a lot of questions and learned that no matter what, it was cool because it was a woman running against an African-American (politics in the simplest yet most complex of terms).

Then about 6 months ago we took her to Borders and told her she could choose any two books. She picked out "Fancy Nancy Goes to the Museum" and "Barack Obama: An American Tale". To my surprise, she wanted us to read the Obama book to her first. So we did.

As the election grew near, she questioned Grammie on why she was now an Obama "fan" and not a Hillary fan anymore. Grammie did a nice job explaining it. I soon explained to McKenna that I wouldn't be home on certain nights so I could go do some work for Obama's campaign. We talked about problems we face as a country and how I felt about his approaches to improving them.

Before we knew it, Election Day was here. The whole family got up at 5:45am and got to the polls by 6:15. We excitingly waited for 45 minutes to cast our vote. I was thrilled when they allowed McKenna to come into the booth with me so she could watch me cast my vote for the first African-American president. She clapped when it was done.

She took a long nap later that afternoon and begged us to let her stay up to watch the returns. We were so happy with her interest that we agreed. So there we all were, watching three hours of television and talking about things while McKenna helped my husband organize papers he was grading (he's a teacher, too). She kept chiming in with comments like, "Uh-oh! It looks like John McCain is going to win West Virginia...yup...he won it," and "Yes! Obama wins Pennsylvania! That's HUGE! Right, mom?"

By 10:50, we told McKenna she had to go to bed and she did so, as did I, both of us quite reluctantly. No more than 15 minutes later, Rob woke us up to tell us the news. She started clapping and leapt out of bed to run downstairs and watch the people celebrating.

This morning, she was still buzzing with excitement, but it was almost as if she became a pundit herself. "Now, let's just hope he can fix the economy and put the troops in the right country." Wow...she really listened.
Of course, the little princess had one final word, "And you know what, mom? He is soooooooo handsome!"