Our son, Oakley Grange, crawled into our bed early this morning. This hasn’t happened in a while and it was a welcome, warm snuggle. There was a time when this was a nightly occurrence and, while it did disrupt my sleep some, I so loved the snuggles and pure love
that radiated from this little boy along with the furnace heat from his body. It was like a living hot water bottle. I figured there would come a time when he wouldn’t come find us in the night and so, I always welcomed it.
Last night I thought it was poignant that he came to snuggle. See Oakley is, in his words, exactly seven years, six months and four days old. He was born in July 16, 2009.
He was our second successful pregnancy after his brother and a series of losses. We fought for our boys. So, in that journey to grow our family we tracked and tracked our ‘progress’. We knew exactly when he was conceived, Election night, November 4th, 2008.
He was a hard-fought prize. During my pregnancy I called myself an Obama Momma. I had read that Obama himself was a Kennedy baby being conceived when JFK was elected. I felt we were in good company.
I proudly felt that he was a gift of good will that came on a night when the world celebrated good things to come with an budding Obama presidency. Yes, we can and yes, we did. Oakley was one of our ‘good things’.
Now, at the end of Obama’s presidency I feel a strong sense of melancholy when I look at Oakley. To us he is a living representation of length of Obama’s transition, presidency and tenure.
Of course, we will keep measuring Oakley’s life in other common ways; weeks, months, years, feet grown, grades achieved, teeth loss and Lego sets built, however, he will always have this special place as a living reminder of the time that Obama was in office.
Oakley is snuggling less and less and Obama has left the White House. Change is upon us. Tomorrow will be the first day of his life that Oakley will wake up with a white man as the President. I hope his early years and Obama’s legacy give him wings, hope and strength in his life that what is diversity to us older folk is his ‘normal’. Right now, we can all use some hope and a return to normal.
We had gotten to the stage of heartbeats before but, something about this heartbeat struck me and held me in such an odd moment of time. The thought of this heart beating for a long time stretched out in front of my mind. I imagined that this heart would beat for over a 100 years. The thought wasn’t just hope, that was there too but, it felt like it was fact, a truism, the future. Almost like pictures on a screen.
I send a silent kiss to wherever they are and hold a tiny piece of their souls in my heart.