Inauguration/Birthday

January 20th is my birthday. It is also Inauguration Day. My favorite Birthday Inaugural was when Kennedy was inaugurated. We had a snow day and my Mom took the day off. We sat glued to our little black and white TV and watched him get sworn in. I even remember Robert Frost fumbling with his notes and then switching poems to one he knew by heart that was brilliantly appropriate.

~ The Gift Outright ~

The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia.
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak.
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

I'vehad some grim inaugural birthdays....The Bush ones were dreadful, and Reagan...

But this year's is going to be a delight. A day I never dreamed would come. History and Halleluias.

I just canceled lunch out with friends to celebrate the inaugural at home instead.