New Start

I woke up this morning to excited whispers from the living room. "It snowed!!!" The boys climbed gingerly (they know I'm cranky in the morning!) into my bed and we snuggled under the covers and listened for school closings on NPR. Of course the talk was not of school closings. It was of the inauguration, and I thought- how right that we should wake to a world transformed.

When I was in seventh grade we lived in a suburb of D.C. and my mom took us downtown to see Clinton's inaugural parade. I remember her instructing me as we squeezed ourselves on to the Metro, what to do if we got separated (get off at the next stop and go to the ticket kiosk). On the radio it said that the Metro was already packed at 4 A.M. today!

Last night we watched Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech on youtube for family home evening. When it was over we asked the boys if they thought his dream had come true. I waited for the affirmative answer- and my chance to correct them and gently explain that actually, we live in a world that still is not a very good place for most minorities, and that there is still so much work to be done. But they answered with such innocent conviction, "yes!" and "oh yes!", that I swallowed my words and prayed silently that maybe they were more right than I knew.