That Sinking Feeling

I'm trying to be optimistic. I'm trying to imagine a wave of sanity and decency sweeping across this country and carrying with it Barack Obama, all the way to the White House. But I've been disappointed too often by the decisions of my supposed countrymen, by their answering the calls of their lesser angels. I'm afraid to be too hopeful and this time, it won't be garden-variety disappointment I'll be wrestling with if he loses. It'll be a crushing blow to all that I care about and value about this country that I was born in, and to which my father came as an immigrant/refugee.

But also not wanting to sit on the sidelines and bitch, I filled out some forms to volunteer with Obama's campaign. I'm willing to go to other states for him and make his case. I'm not sure they'll take me (they seem to require a five-week commitment), but we'll see. As a mother of three children (one of whom is autistic), I guess I'm just not the heroic everymom that Sarah Palin is. Were I she, I could not only kill defenseless animals with high powered weapons, prod my local librarian to remove books from the shelves and then threaten to fire her when she refuses (only to be called off by a local uproar against the move), hire my high school classmates for government jobs for which they're patently unqualified, threaten my ex-brother-in-law's boss with the loss of his job because my bro-in-law's being a meanie to my sister and the boss won't ax him, and tout my fiscal conservative bona fides by highlighting the fact that I put the state's plane up for sale on ebay. (Oops! Forget to mention that nobody bid and I sold it at a $600,000 loss to an Alaskan businessman.) If I were even half the moral/fiscal/family hero Palin is, I could leave my family for five weeks to campaign for the man I desperately want to see win. Since I'm not, I'll just have to live with my many shortcomings.