It’s Really Real.

My brown skin hates the cold, for my genes originate from tropical climates, but I walked for two hours in below 30-degrees to see the red, white, and blue lights adorning my city’s skyline. Chicago isn’t D.C., but it was a huge pumping heart in the Un Civil Rights Movement of 2020, to quote our President Joe Biden. With each step my Sorrels and I took, I felt connected to the peaceful transition of power by being among my fellow Americans, albeit hundreds of miles away from the pomp and circumstance and hiding from the icy gusts like a huddled moving shadow warmed only by hope and pride.

After a fitful night’s rest corrupted by too much caffeine and anxiety, my buzzing and ringing phone demanded attention — time to get up; four years are over. Four years begin, again.

Even at 7 am, a flurry of blue messages called for clumsy fingers to engage with photo-filled messages that each only had three little words: “Happy Inauguration Day!”

With gritted teeth and my pulse reverberating in my years, I kicked off the covers and held my breath. Peeking outside, the bright rose sky splashing proudly over the snow-capped buildings, indicated that today, Inauguration Day, would not be marred by a reprised Insurrection, a tainted Tweet, or vitriol. Today would, in fact, just be good.

I got dressed in my vintage Karl Lagerfeld lace-collard black sweater ($30, Lost Girls Vintage, Logan Square!) and felt trepidation melt and RBG on my heart.

We are the sum total of all those who have paid attention to us or given their time to us, and we made it to a day when a South Asian woman, no, a Black woman, no, a Woman, created room for an inaugural Second Gentleman. Kamala Harris, the daughter of inter-racial immigrant parents seeking a better life within our shiny beacon on a hill, shattered so many ceilings that only a limitless sky will forever be in our sights. My sights.

As a South Asian woman, who is a daughter of immigrants with a Black best friend, I am still working on believing to my core that this is real, for it’s a reality I never read about, never watched in my movies, nor ever had the courage to dream would be possible. Anthropomorphized life on other planets or an army of robots laying claim to Earth, seemed more within my realm of understanding and possibility than simply a woman, who looked like me, taking a law-making, influential position of power etching her name into the history books that my nieces and future children will read. Harris paved not just roads to political success, but tangible dreams, and I don’t yet know how to believe my own eyes, but there is a part of me that could burst with broken-hearted joy.

Today is possible because of the labor Black people endured for the 1964 Civil Rights Act to be passed, making it so my family, my legacy, my history could exist on that very same shiny beacon on the hill Harris’ parents’ made their home. Today is possible because of the persistent fight for equality advocated by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Today is possible because 75 million people said, “we can do better,” and didn’t stop moving their bodies.

Today is the sum total of every act of injustice made right, every cry for change, and every word in our very own Consitution beginning with the urge, “to create a more perfect Union.” Today means allowing one human to hold space for so many who needed a leader within whom they may also see themselves. And now, the work can start, now we can continue to inch closer to the wish of a “more perfect Union” one truly beset by liberty and justice for all. Today, we can change connotations.

After the messages with those three little words, one question or sentiment followed like instinct: “How do you feel?” and “Do you feel lighter yet?”

Feeling pride surge like adrenaline, I was energized, thrilled but unable to trust that it would, in fact, be okay today. The Insurrection only two weeks ago and heightened alarm made unbridled joy a naive wish.

But, sitting at my grief-healing-painted desk in my living room, wearing my RBG-inspired sweater, staring into my work computer, I heard Vice President Kamala Harris say the final words of her swearing-in, “so help me God,” and I sighed a sigh so heavy it took four years to metastasize. The vindictive tumor was gone, and I could relent.

I recorded Harris’s swearing-in, then Biden’s, using my iPhone like a retired tourist on a tropical vacation witnessing an endangered species being released back into its habitat after careful nurturing and determination. I recorded it so I could have a bedtime story. I recorded it so when the news moves on and Tuesday in April becomes about the environment, the economy, the taxes, the continued exhaustive work of civil rights, I’d have a reminder that good exists. I’d have proof that we can get through anything because we have shown that we did.

Finally, I could respond to the red notifications in my messaging apps. I sent the recordings I made and wrote, “it’s really real.”

Like Life, Joy is Underscored by Immense Sadness

My grief often keeps me rattled and unable to move or believe in goodness. Knowing President Biden has felt the pain my parents feel each day, and that his son feels the pain I endure every second also creates a degree of representation I didn’t know I urgently needed. As we reckon with the loss of 400,000 Americans, meaning 1 in 5 people you know, knows someone impacted by that astronomical number of losses that exceed the entire human cost of the Second World War, we have to atone. Having leadership that looks like the folks disproportionately affected and one who can express compassion rooted in experience, means we gained leadership that is really for the people and by the people.

Losing a sibling who would be hailed as a healthcare hero has compounded the collective grief we all share. But, I know, as President Biden knows, as we all felt today, we can get through it, because we have gotten through it, and “we will never, ever, ever, ever fail.” My new president told me that, and now I can believe my president, again.

Originally published at https://contentsabina.medium.com on January 21, 2021.