They stole a little piece of my wife's heart today.
This morning, my wife called me in tears because our Obama sign was gone from our rural Michigan yard.
Her voice was shaking and I could tell instantly something was wrong when I answered, and with the protective instinct in me kicking in I immediately asked her what was wrong. She said when she left for college, her beloved Obama/Biden sign was gone. Only two days ago, after weeks and weeks of waiting, we had received our package from the Obama campaign containing our sign, campaign buttons and t-shirt contained inside.
And in less than 24 hours, it was gone and a little piece of her heart went with it. In its place will be a resolve that will make her vote Democrat for the rest of her life.
Others may say that it was just one sign, that the fight is to be fought over time and to get over it, but I wanted to share some of why it meant so much to her.
My wife is the daughter of a southern Illinois minister, adopted, along with her sister when she was 8 years old after being in the foster care system. She was raised under her parent’s bubble of hate and paranoia until she was 22 when she struck out on her own. After meeting me, we spent hours and hours discussing our views, and like most people, her eyes were opened once she became educated and was able to see more than the view her parents gave her.
We have been through a great deal during the last few years: the decline of the domestic auto industry here in Michigan, being unable to sell our house when I changed careers and went into banking (unfortunately doing Marketing for the Mortgage Division of a major bank) and seen the fortunes of everyone around us decline rapidly.
We decided to go back to school full-time to each earn additional degrees in Computer Science. It has been a struggle financially as we work to pay our bills working full-time and finance school on a full-time basis. Money is extremely tight for us and we spend it wisely, fearful of not being able to make ends meet.
For the first time in her life, my wife has become active in a presidential campaign. We have worked for the Obama/Biden campaign here locally, putting in hours on the phone when schedule permits. We have canvassed in often unfriendly rural neighborhoods, had people threaten to send their dogs after us for voting for Obama and doing our part to spread the word of hope.
We have given multiple times to the Obama campaign, in amounts that we can afford as often as possible. My wife endured a recent weekend with her family where she was called amoral and said to be parroting my thoughts and argument style when she used facts and ideas to counter her family's fundamentalism.
And when that package arrived with the Obama yard sign in it, all her efforts seemed to be epitomized on that plastic sign with the little snap together poles. My father put the sign in our yard, proudly displaying it for us (they live across the street from the house we rent) and we all stood at the edge of the yard and admired it.
My wife was most proud of it and she leaned against me, feeling like maybe times they are a' changin' (Thank You, Bob).
This morning they stole that feeling from her. The hatred, narrow-mindedness, and blind obedience of McPalin and their supporters have hurt her deeply. Her sense of loss was so strong this morning, but it has galvanized her.
I am so proud of her that she is not going to allow them to win, not going to allow them to take this from her.
This weekend we are building a 4' x 8' Obama/Biden sign, which is going to be installed on 4" X 4" posts embedded deeply into the ground. We are going to trace the exact same image from the former sign on a larger scale, paint it using the proper colors, and we are going to make it beautiful and display it proudly in the yard for everyone to see. There will be a light on it at all times so that everyone can see it, no matter the time of day and if they deface it we will repaint it again and again and again Obama is in that office and we can be proud as a nation.
Thank you for reading. Keep up the fight.