My mother has a tradition of not watching or paying attention to the Cal football team, because she says that if she does, they lose. Sometimes she even tries not to hear the scores.

In this vein, during the ceremony and the speech, when everyone in the country was watching, I was wandering on foot on Madison from Michigan to Wacker, crossing the river, crossing the freeway, staring at the sky, which got bluer the longer I walked.

Through a humorous but very Dara sequence of events and a misplaced bus pass, I ended up walking home, all the way from downtown to Humboldt Park, which isn’t that far, really – less than five miles. I walked very slowly. I walked on Milwaukee and Division, all the way home. The city was subdued. I was subdued.

On the way home, because I was walking, I stopped into the office of an organization I’ve been thinking about stopping in on for six months, and had a good talk with them. It seemed like a day when anything could happen, and something did.

At night, I went to yoga class. The teacher said she expected to find us dancing when she came in, but we were sitting there, quiet as schoolchildren, ten mice on yoga mats. The real work begins now, doesn’t it? This is where we figure out who we, as a country, are – and if we can deal with the enormous problems that lie ahead of us.

I still didn’t believe it, not really, when I went to bed. It was too quiet.

Finally, this morning, I finally let myself go online and start to believe that it had really happened – that Barack Obama is our President. I let myself Google Michelle’s dress and Barack’s speech and a glorious photo montage of all his advisors and cabinet staff. I typed “Whitehouse.gov” into my browser and saw that his Web aesthetic has overtaken even that stentorian site.

It’s real. Barack Obama is our President.

Yesterday and today, as if the sun came out to celebrate with us, it’s been two glorious beautiful days in Chicago, with positively liveable temperatures, and people on the streets are laughing and shouting “Feels like summer!” at each other.

So it does.

Today is the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the day before the inauguration of Barack Obama as the forty-fourth President of the United States of America.

Last night, at a Bucktown bar and a Bucktown taqueria that reminded me of the Mission, a friend and I got into a 1 am discussion with a pair of opinionated Chicago strangers. We disagreed with each other on every point in the playbook* – Steelers vs. Cardinals, voter registration, economic policy, the bailout, Obama’s merits. It was a reminder to me, from within my pro-Barack haze of euphoria, that there are many, many people in this country for whom the jury is still out.

What further argument can you pursue when one person thinks everything works through the “trickle-down” economic principle and the other thinks nothing does? Still, I like it when discussions happen between strangers, especially with opposing viewpoints. One of them at least conceded that Obama had a chance to be better than Bush, and that the Steelers were probably the favorites (but not, in both cases, by how much!)

One of the main reasons I like Obama’s chances as a President so much is his ability to engage in debate and discussion across the aisle, with respect. We need that so much, especially in times like these. Although our Republican taqueria stranger wasn’t willing to give us even that, I’ll give you a six-point spread – hell, six and a half – that he is going to keep on trying to work with the Republicans every single day of his term.

Here’s to an era of American politics where we all talk to a lot more strangers.

* except Iraq. This man was one of the most Republican Republicans I’ve ever spoken to, and he agreed that we had no good reason to be in that war.

Tonight, 24 hours before the inaguration, the American flag flying at the corner of 47th and Drexel in Hyde Park, Chicago, was waving in the falling snow with proud, slow, deliberate ripples. Like it wanted to be at the front of a Presidential motorcade.

I stood at the corner, full of Eileen and Danny’s pasta, shuffling my boots in the snow, waiting for the 47 bus, and watching pointillist snowflakes sparkle in the night around the flagpole.

Watch me, said the flag. Watch me.
Watch me.

I hope I never forget what it feels like to be this proud of my country.