With Gratitude

I don't know about the rest of you, but it's taken me several days to recover from our Washington, DC excursion. Every muscle in my body was feeling the physical and emotional weight of this monumental occasion. For me, the months of planning and executing are over, but the impact of being present in DC for the inauguration of President Barack H. Obama will endure for the rest of my life.

Not everything went as scheduled. For one, it took us three hours for a 15-minute Metro ride from Clarendon Station in Virginia to L'Enfant Plaza in DC. The last hour was spent STUCK in the subway station (see video). Therefore, I was unable to meet the buses from Frederick as they rolled into DC along with 10,000 other buses. My brother Khalid Moss, a reporter for the Dayton Daily News, says he will watch the next inauguration on TV. He did not enjoy the "Human Gridlock." I, however, had a life-changing experience, and I'm grateful for the success of our endeavor as measured by your responses to me through emails, phone calls, and cards. This trip was the first I have organized in many, many years. And, of course, I did not do it alone. So, here is my list of public thank yous:

I thank my mother Frances Moore and my mother-in-law Gloria Johnston for their support through this entire venture. I thank my 100-year-0ld Nana for the fur hat and coat. I never felt the cold. I thank my husband David and brother Johnny for agreeing to watch the inauguation from the hotel so the 2 and 3-year-old children would not have to be out in the 17 degree weather. Thanks to my brother Khalid for tipping off the local media and hauling boxes of food and drinks onto the bus. I thank Linda, Andrea, Bree, Allen, and Jasmine for their excellent service on the bus. And Linda especially for all the running around she did before the trip. Thanks to Jerome for helping me populate Bus 2 with the lively and interesting educators from Longfellow and Wogamon Elementary schools in Dayton. I am grateful to ALL OF YOU who signed up for this trip. Your patronage, patience, and many words and acts of kindness as we worked through one issue after another provided us with valuable experience.

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To our new President, thank you for taking on the massive responsibility of pulling our nation together and for reviving the spirit of "Yes we can!" in so many, me included. Finally, I am grateful to God for seeing us safely to Washington and back home again and for making all things possible.

Help us build an online scrapbook of our experience. Share your story and pictures. You can post them as a comment, or you can email me and I will post them on the main page. Let those who traveled with you, and those who did not, know what it felt like, looked like, smelled like--to be on the ground along with 1.8 million people for this history-making event. In generations to come, your grandchildren's children will do a search about the inauguation, and your stories/pictures (if I tag them correctly) just might pop up!