Wait for me!
On January 20th in 1973, I know where I was. Following my older Jim as he pushed through the crowd to get closer to the steps off the East Protico of the Capital.
“Wait for me,” I must have cried, as all little brothers do when tagging along behind older brothers.
“Hurry up,” he’d have said. I’d be hurrying not because what we were about to see would rivet us to our seats, but because that’s what we were told to do. My father’s two special passes in hand, two chances to witness history, though we didn’t know it at the time. How could we? We were teenagers following direction, more interested in Kick the Can than do you solemnly swear.
“Why are we here?” I’d have complained. “Can’t we just go do something fun?”
“This is fun,” Dad would have said. “You’ll tell your kids about it.”
January 20th fast approaches once more, and again we will be witnessing history. This time, almost a half century later, I have a better grasp on what’s at stake. All I knew in 1973 was that my parents didn’t much like Richard M. Nixon, though my father had followed him on a press junket when Nixon was vice president to Eisenhower. A trip to Alaska not on Air Force One, but some dual prop Boeing jet of the times. I know this to be true not from his storytelling, but from the picture we leafed through in one of my parents scrap books. An action shot so to speak, of a cub reporter sharpening his pen on the given assignment across his desk, regardless of politics. All the News that’s Fit to Print his calling.
“I’m after the truth,” I’d later read in one of Dad’s pieces decrying Yellow Journalism. “That’s what journalists aspire to.” Towards the end of his life he’d say we’ve lost our way.
My Mom had a thing for Nixon, not for his politics, but because the two of them shared birthdays. She loathed the man, but loved the connection, trading prank birthday cards with another friend that too shared the date. Mom and I even had the chance to see Nixon walking in the Rose Garden one sunny afternoon, maybe as a part of this same trip.
“January 9th,” she shouted from in the crowd, to which he looked-up and smiled. What we’ll give up to brush shoulders with celebrity I thought, grimacing as Mom shouted a random date to a sitting president.
“Mom, no!” I said pulling on her sweater. “Shhhh!”
“Don’t you shush me,” her reply.
My mom’s dislike for Tricky Dick maybe even deeper than my father’s, because Agnew had been the Governor of Maryland where Mom grew up.
“A crook,” she said of Spiro. “They both are,” she’d come to say as we watched Watergate hearings in between Star Trek reruns.
“Don’t you care what’s happening in the world?” she’d plead when we insisted on tuning in to Gilligan’s Island for another episode of a hopeless crew frolicking around a cheesy Hollywood set. The construct prescient when we look back — marooned on deserted an island or warping around the galaxy. Either way, kind of lost, but still holding out hope.
“Of course we do,” our unconvincing chorus. “Mom, you should watch this. It’s funny.” Not anymore.
The only thing my Mom watched was Julia Child. You could tempt Dad with the cartoon BIFF’s and BONK’s of the ever so campy Batman, but that was about it. His first choices Sixty Minutes and Washington Week. My parents did everything they could to get us interested in the events of the world. On this day in 1973 it meant attending a Presidential swearing-in.
“What’s going to happen?” I asked, fearing the worst, which was nothing. Let’s hope for a repeat performance.
“He’ll take the oath with a hand on the bible,” my father explained. “The Chief Justice does the swearing in.” All of this happening not on the side facing the Mall, but rather on the East Wing’s steps facing the Library of Congress where an insurrection took place this past week.
“That’s it!?!” I’d have thought, but smart enough not to say.
I remember thinking that attending Obama’s inauguration would be cool, to be a part of that history. Instead, we settled for a giant picture of Barack and Michelle on page one the next day, the two of them arm in arm, smiling. Another action shot, this time featuring the first black president in the history of our country. I got goose bumps from that day’s picture, thinking about their feat. None of us can predict what we’re going to see and feel when Biden and Harris are sworn in. Peaceful transition. Violent insurrection. Anyone’s guess.
It’s my sense that this time, the two of them are not the only ones taking a pledge, but that we all are signing-up for something bigger, no matter what side of the political spectrum we may fall. To some extent, this past presidency, pandemic, and years of social unrest have created a moment in time unlike any other in our lifetimes, exposing truths that lay hidden, showing pain and hardship that we too often turn a blind eye towards. No, this time I feel like I’m up there with the two of them, pledging to do more, be better, take advantage of the precious time that I have in this world make some sort of difference — not so much a New Year’s Resolution, as a new term’s recognition, that we can’t go on as we have. It’s un-survivable. Climate, social justice, broken politics make it so. We can help mend, or we can go to war. I’m choosing to help mend. Every little thing I take-on makes a difference.
This time, I don’t see it as the President and Vice President’s job to fix it. They are just two people greatly limited by politics and term. Fueled by the pressures of a pandemic, we’re living through moment when we all look around and decide if we’re going to just let things get worse, or do something.
When Jim and I finally return to find my parents in the crowd behind the security line that we’d been allowed to cross, my father asked, “well, what did you see?”
“We saw Walter Cronkite,” I said. I hope I pay more attention this time.
