Today, I find myself truly missing my homes for the first time since I arrived here.

I say “homes” because I do consider myself having two: Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C (cities just 5 hours of interstate apart, but in such decidedly different cultures, I often feel I ought to have a passport to go between them).

Pittsburgh is missed because the lovely Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday night, and hence will go on to play in the Superbowl. The last time this happened, in 2006, I was working as a reporter at The Beaver County Times … and I can’t say I’ll miss having my workday being 100% dedicated to every (and any) possible way of saying something about Steelers and Steeler love. I literally had to write stories about Ben Roethlisberger’s beard. No, I am not kidding. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I wrote another one. Yup — two stories, taking up valuable news space. About facial hair. (Perhaps you recall my earlier annoyance at the American press’s general neglect of the Russia-Ukraine gas crisis? Well, Russia and the Ukraine could both be wiped off the map and it likely wouldn’t even merit an inch of newsprint in a Pittsburgh region paper until after the Superbowl.) But, now that it isn’t my job to come up with the newest approach to Terrible Towel use, I will certainly miss the excitement and the way sports victory can briefly throw otherwise unrelated people together in one happy ball of Pittsburgh-love (Perhaps nobody has explained this feeling better than fellow former-’burgher/now DC-ist Howard Fineman in a 2005 MSNBC column, although his account came after a playoff loss.)

Yet, of course, far more missed by this ex-pat today is the festivities blooming on the National Mall for the Inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th President of the United States!!!!.

For eight years, I have grown more and more weary of a President who appeared to care about neither the interests of other countries, nor those in his own country who didn’t fit his strict ideals of “real” Americans (which must have meant rich, white, straight, male and so on, judging by the policy he made). For my entire adult voting life, I have listened to the word “intellectual” be used as a slur, and watched the leader of the free world bumble through the English language, basking in his own stupidity as a badge of what made him “real” (and, if to be like him was to be a real American, what does that mean he is saying about us as a country?) For my past trips and time abroad, I have hidden my nationality — “Si, sono olandese” I responded to many an Italian’s query back in 2002, because, since our reputation was so low abroad the Italians seemed to believe anyone who spoke Italian (even bad Italian) couldn’t be from that exceptionalist America, and they picked Dutch as the most likely place for my paler-faced self.

But today, I’m going out to do my errands and take my Hungarian classes and sit in my new favorite cafe wearing an Obama shirt, boldly addressing postcards with “U.S.A” as the last address line.

Because today … YES WE CAN!

And, so, today, I am missing the great big party that is erupting in my home of Washington, D.C. It’s ironic, to say the least, that I suffered the limo-clogged streets and back Metro service through two inaugurations of Mr. Bush, “celebrations” that, for me, felt more like times to mourn.

Whoa. I do love to watch that man speak. Throughout the election, both detractors and supporters worried over his eloquence. What if he is just a bunch of pretty words? they asked, seeming to be frightened of a politician who dared to treat his constituents as if they might have a reading comprehension level above the 5th grade … as if they might possibly understand complex issues. Words are not everything, no. But take it from an English teacher: words matter. Stories can be the beginning of something that changes lives (ask the female abolitionist writers of 19th century America, whose poems began a freedom movement, or anyone who was around hear the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.) I just wish I could see him say them in person … and, since Bono and Springsteen were in my old backyard, to walk down to see them, too.

I think if I was back there, I’d be so giddy on it all, I might even be nice to the tourists who stand on the left of the Metro escalator.

Yes, I miss D.C. today. One of the things that annoyed me the most during the past campaign season — and this came from both colors, Red and Blue — was the demonizing of urban life in Washington and New York. We suddenly became cities that weren’t “real America.”  We became the scapegoat for everyone else’s frustrations. Every politico and his or her supporters used rhetoric making of Washington into some sort of devil’s den (and even those areas which touched Washington, like my last residence, Northern Virginia, which was forever touted as not being “real Virginia” … and, hence, not “real America.”) Well,

I have to ask, since when did I not become a “real” American? When did all of my many wonderful friends and colleagues who live in Washington become excluded? I often think about why I have stayed in Washington. Certainly, some of it was the convenience of already knowing a city and people in it after college. Certainly, some of it was the small and superficial: short winters and long springs, the Corcoran Gallery, Kramerbooks’s combination of good wine and good literature, the 9:30 club, the way the cherry blossoms look each April. But I think why I stay is that my Washington has never been about the “evil” Washington created by political spin doctors. Sure, there are lobbyists and weasels and far, far more lawyers than any one city should safely contain. Yet, it is also filled with a bunch of people who truly believe in what they are doing, who have often forgone higher-paying and high-prestige career paths to dedicate their time to some cause or non-profit or campaign they believe in. I had — and have — many friends like that. Underneath all the pomp and circumstance of press conferences and bigwig politicos, there is still a layer of this belief in making the world a better place. What, then, is more “real American” than that? No, we are not as exciting and glamorous as New York, as charming as Boston, or as hip as Austin. We are a type-A, political geek city, a place where you are far more likely to hear people discussing foreign policy than salaries or who designed their bag at a bar. And that fits a nice type-A geek like myself just fine.

Of course, in the months since the election, I know the main bar talk in the Beltway region must have been how Obama has a huge, nearly insurmountable task ahead of him. The nation is in a recession…possibly even a depression. Houses are foreclosed upon; colleges are no longer need-blind. We are still split violently ideologically as a country — beautiful California, the sunny state who is supposed to move first and show us who we can be if we dare to progress, voted the changemaker in then promptly slammed the door on gay and lesbian people, effectively telling them that their love regulated them to second-class citizen status. Gaza is showing that America’s policy in Israel can no longer be so blindly supportive. Russia is flexing its muscles by freezing out its poorer neighbors. Dafur rages on, with many thanks to China’s eager willingness to supply guns. The Earth is getting hotter and more crowded.

And, of course, there is a black man as president, but we are still a nation which suffers from our biggest self-inflicted wound: racism. I teared up, like any good hopeful liberal, when I saw the white yuppie gentrifiers of U Street dancing with its longtime (and, often, soon-to-be-displaced) African-American residents, but I recognize, as the MLK III says in the Washington Post, that OBama is no “panacea of race” relations in the U.S.

Still, I do believe in the intelligence behind the eloquence, and that Obama knows these things. The Onion got it right: he has the worst job ever. But maybe, if this super-hopeful, willing-to-help attitude carries over — even just a little bit — there could be more change. The interesting thing about my Obama happiness tying in with a little Steelers joy is that, when I first saw the pictures of the street parties in D.C., my first thought was that I hadn’t seen anything like that since the Steelers 2006 Superbowl win, when they lived up to the “one for the thumb,” or fifth ring, that the franchise has been chasing since I was born in ’82.

I know, I know — a cheesy metaphor at best. Yet, it is still true: never, ever in my life had I seen people respond to political change … to the boring world of suits and policy wonks … with the same fervor that people applied to the guts-and-glamor world of professional sports. (I can tell you, as a firsthand witness, there were no-traffic stopping, spontaneous dance parties of strangers at either of Bush’s elections … although, there was one down on M Street the year Georgetown beat Duke in basketball).  That does give me hope.

There was one part in Obama’s pre-inauguration speech from Sunday that I really liked, where he admits how hard this change will be.

“It is how this nation has overcome the greatest differences and the longest odds — because there is no obstacle that can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change.That is the belief with which we began this campaign, and that is how we will overcome what ails us now. There is no doubt that our road will be long. That our climb will be steep. But never forget that the true character of our nation is revealed not during times of comfort and ease, but by the right we do when the moment is hard. I ask you to help reveal that character once more, and together, we can carry forward as one nation, and one people, the legacy of our forefathers that we celebrate today.”

I miss my D.C. home today. But, even far away, I’m watching it all, and trying, despite everything we face, to believe in the right we can do.

Oh, and one more gratituous happy-Obama video.

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