For a whole host of reason, I've been finding myself feeling really sad that it looks like none of the people who raised Barack Obama will be around to see him win this thing (I just did a jinx dance). Five years after my own father died, my daughter will do something and I find myself feeling cheated that her grandfather never got to know her... didn't get to see her like she was this morning reading four-digit numbers aloud (she's got a great teacher). I feel cheated knowing how proud he'd be of me when he saw this amazing kid we're raising.
This is the saddest fact of life, I think, that it goes on without us. Also the most joyful. This is what faith means to me: that even without our presence, life goes on. And, as my personal hero would say: the effects of our lives are incalculably diffusive.
And I read this beautiful blogpost by a blogger I like a lot named Ta-Neishi Coates. It was more relevant to what I was thinking before I started writing. But I think you'd like it... whoever you are.
