....about President Obama, just this week before he took the oath. In fact, the night before.  In this dream, I was in a room with a few other women (perhaps my book group) and he appeared in the doorway, wearing a pale blue button down shirt, no tie.  He was tall, very tall, perhaps prompted by my recent reading about Lincoln in “Team of Rivals”, or maybe some association with the taller tribes of Africa.  In the dream, I thought it was him, and then had a moment of doubt.  But he met my eye and smiled —that smile — and I went over to shake his hand. Still very tall.  Some gap here in the dream, and then it turns out that he is staying in a hotel room next to the room I am sharing with a woman friend (maybe my travel pal, Mary Jane).  His room is long and narrow, like him, or like a train car, and he leaves the door open as prepares to give a speech. We  hear him practice in words that are both English and foreign, “African”?  Shortly after, he appears at the door of our room and asks if I have any Pepto-Bismal, which I almost always have on me, and am happy to share. End of dream.

 I suspect that our reading of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book on Lincoln’s presidency has infiltrated my subconscious, linking Obama to Lincoln in more than one way: the lanky figures; the less than privileged upbringing; the book smarts; the female family support; the ability to write and the ability to speak; lawyers. Also, mid-western roots, don’t let’s forget.  It was mere coincidence that the book group picked “Team of Rivals” over a year ago and put it on the schedule for January 20, the presidential inauguration. A happy coincidence.

 However, seems to me, beyond the apparent parallels between Obama and Lincoln, there is another historical figure that comes to mind: Frederick Douglass. We read “Narrative of a Slave” a couple years ago, refreshing my memory of the facts of his life.  First and foremost is the biracial backgrounds; in Fred. Douglass’s case, a slave mother and unnamed white father, likely the plantation owner or a relative. Obama, of course, is the child of a white mother with roots in Kansas, and a black man from Africa who had come to the US as a student. They are, like other biracial children, between worlds, of both, and not completely of one or the other.  Fred. Douglass recalls being called “Yaller”, a dismissive slight, somehow worse than full-blooded.  Obama, in “Dreams from my Father”, writes of his minority status at school, but also being somehow “not black enough” for some black people. Both smart and literate men, they wrote memoirs about their personal struggles and how discomfort forced them to take action beyond looking for personal success. Both are able to excite crowds of both races; both are “firsts” in a field. Both come on the national stage during times of distress and upheaval.  Both, at the height of their fame, have lost most of their family of origin and have started new families. 

 Yet, I hope that the differences between them will count for more than the similarities.  Frederick Douglass, for all his fantastic, meteoric, self-made rise to fame, has receded somewhat in history, until, fortunately for him, his narrative has helped to expand the canon of 19th century American literature, beyond the “white guys from Harvard” – Thoreau, Emerson, etc.  At the time of Lincoln’s second inauguration, he was not allowed into the White House until he was able to get word to the president himself. I lived for a time in Easton, MD, near where Douglass was born and where the some of the worst years in his narrative take place; there was nothing when I lived there to mark his place of origin.  A century later, a biracial man is President, but the fate of many African Americans is still difficult and desperate.  The perculating upwards of opportunity has not occurred as much as one shining star has come on the stage; one of the talking heads on TV mentioned the fact that there are still few blacks, or women, involved in top level politics. 

 I like Obama. I wish him well. I wish him fortitude to endure the challenges ahead, and the necessary disappointments that will come when people see there are no magic cures, just lots of work and effort over the long haul.  I hope Obama has resiliency, and like Lincoln, can maintain friendships and humor that sustain him through hard times. I hope, like Douglass, he will continue to address the questions of race that we still struggle with in America. He has a great smile, and a lovely family.  I was very glad to meet him in my dream.