Like Obama, I never had much time after the convention to bask in the glory of the four days that were the Democratic National Convention. Invesco is still a very clear, crisp dream that faded into night, fireworks and tears, and then one last lingering look at the stadium, glowing with spirit as bodies spiraled around glass-encased stairwells, chanting "Yes we can!" I didn't get out of the Invesco parking lot until some time after nine...ten...maybe eleven. I wandered onto a free shuttle, destination anywhere, sent a few highly exclamatory text messages ("CANNOT BELIEVE IT!!!!" "AMAZING!!" "SI SE PUEDE!!!"), and fell asleep to the hum of the idling engine in the long line of cars. I didn't awake until I was being nudged out of my seat by the man next to me, my damp palm holding tightly to my American flag, my cheek plastered to the CHANGE sign I had placed up against the window. I got off the shuttle at Union Station, and from there, I remember very little until I awoke the following day on Alaskan Airlines Flight #75 in Juneau.
Juneau initially seemed so irrelevant to the week's activities, but I kind of liked the idea of it. I was going for my second cousin's wedding, but I figured it would also serve as a kind of retreat, a moment when I could stare out at a glacier and reflect on the four days prior; take deep gulps of Alaskan air and try to commit to memory every moment I had experienced in Denver.
As we taxied to the gate in Juneau, I turned my cell phone on and watched the screen think while it powered up. As the emails flooded in, I saw a "CNN Breaking News" email. Sleepily, I clicked on the email to see what sort of post-convention excitement it could be.
Sen. John McCain picks Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate on GOP ticket for White House, CNN learns.
I was so incredibly tired that for a moment, I really thought my eyes were deceiving me. 'Alaska Gov.?' I thought. Aren't I in Alaska? This can't be right.
A quick look at the mountainside around me and three stuffed bears later in the airport terminal, it was confirmed that I was in fact in Alaska, and that my quiet retreat to Juneau was now suddenly politically-charged. "Did you hear the news?" and "Aren't you glad you're in Juneau while this is going on?" would be repeated over and over to me during the three days I was there. No, I didn't want to know anything about the Alaskan governor whom the locals described as a flip-flopper beauty queen. Just let me bask in my DNC glory.
And so the convention for me became much like the confetti that rocketed up around Barack Obama after his speech at Invesco -- momentarily high but falling slowly and softly away. And I arrived home after the convention to face handfuls of red, white and blue tissue paper hastily grabbed off the floor on my way out of the stadium, and my happiness turning to illness caused by the too-quick return to sea-level: the reality of Sarah Palin.
I got the bends.
Until today, when I got an invitation to join the "I Have More Foreign Policy Experience Than Sarah Palin" group on Facebook. What was surprising was not the group name, nor the validity of the subject, but the sender.
I have a friend. We'll call her E-dub. Since I met her, in November 2006, I have very quietly tolerated her conservative beliefs. While the girl can drink, she also is a very devout Catholic from North Carolina who married a career Army officer she met at Duke. I never tried to sway her, figuring it was a lost cause, and if I did, I was too drunk at the time to remember it now.
So when I got an invitation from E-dub, of all people, to join the group, my jaw dropped. It'd be what I'd imagine finding out you have a long lost sibling would feel like. I quickly joined the group, then questioned on E-dub's Facebook wall "Does that group invitation mean that you might be one of those beloved swing voters casting a vote for obama in north carolizza [sic] despite your conservative catholic pretenses?"
And this -- THIS! -- coming from a girl who wore a mock-turtleneck on Sixth Street the first time she went out drinking in Austin:
i think i have to vote absentee in KY. cause we wont have lived in NC but for a couple days come election time. but she definitely may have pushed me over the edge. like i was standing on the edge, and she gave me a big ol shove away from her and her people.
As I was doing a celebration dance in my chair, either for E-dub seeing the light or McCain's plan backfiring, or maybe a little of both, I had another wall post from E-dub:
an addendum: during the DNC, i realized that whatever my particular economic or social leanings may be, this country truly, actually, physically needs Obama to get elected. If he doesnt, i think the educated, optimistic, forward thinking people in America may just plain give up. and that would be terrible.
That would be terrible. And you know what, I can't be one of them. It was the fog of war that gave E-dub and I any sort of common ground to begin with. And so onward into the fog we go.