Dear President Obama,
Over the past decade, I have wanted to write to you on several occasions. I wanted to write to you when I heard your stirring speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention. I wanted to write you when I read your moving memoir, “Dreams from my Father.” I wanted to write you when you delivered your deeply difficult yet astoundingly rousing reflections on race during your first election. And even when you graced our college town with your presence. Then the day of your last speech as an American president came. The finality of it all overwhelmed me; I found myself penning that pent up Thank-You. The Thank-You that was 10+ years in the making.
The night of your last speech. As you stepped onto the stage, sepia skinned, slender framed, I playback to years prior when you stepped into our consciousness, a less silvered, less wizened version of yourself, a dreamer, with worn shoes, and star-flecked eyes and a one-worded banner. A silver tongue who consoled lonesome souls.
That day you first emerged, you were a fresh-faced, different kind of cat, crooning a neoteric tune, I knew that I could kick it with you, a global gypsy who hailed from nowhere and yet was from everywhere. Who probably felt the heaviness of the heavens when asked the elemental question, “where are you from?”
A question you doggedly asked yourself as a child, a question you could not elude as an adult. A question that bridged a divide between us, the divide of two people who had never met and yet somehow connected.
You an American-born, Kenyan-American, raised in Asia and America, and I, an Asian-born, Indian-Christian, raised in Europe and Kenya.
Your Memoir, “Dreams from my Father,” spoke to me on several levels, on subliminal levels; I was an anomaly, yet your affective prose affirmed to me that I was not alone, that I was understood. That the highest office was held by someone who got me. That the “Invisible Man” saw this invisible lady, and all the outliers who’ve slipped through the cracks contrived by society.
You saw the Others. Because you were the Other.
No one embodies this variegated ever-wavering world better than you, “if the world was a person, the world would be you.” You represent the best of all of us. The King’s Dream, the American Dream, where black children, and white children, and all children stood hand in hand in and chose you.
And as transformational, and as transcendent as you were a figure, you never claimed to be a savior. Whilst some apotheosised you, you knew who you were. You kept it real. You admitted that you were imperfect. And we respected you for it. You grasped nuance and subtlety in a manner we hadn’t quite beheld on the world stage, pairing the either/ors of policy with the complexities of ethics and empathy.
What was more profound than your improbable presidency, or any of your policies, was who you were. “The content of your character,” always beamed brighter, and guided us through the funk, the fog; the tragic Trayvon Martins, the shattering Sandy Hooks.
Now, post-presidency, we recall your wisdom, as the powers that prevail, weaponize our sacred differences, we brazenly “hope,” as you once urged us to. And to “Go High” when everything else sinks to the slovenly lows. To rise while they decide to dive.
Just what an honor to have experienced your presidency. To have listened to your lucid lines, your conciliatory oratory. To have had my two brown boys spend their formative years looking up to someone who looks like them, but more importantly, someone who is to be looked up to. A President’s President.
Yes, you.
You’re the president who signed my citizenship letter. And you’re the very first person I voted for.
Thank you.
Photo Credit Pete Souza
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