. . . this poem for us today. All of us . . .

 

The night before the inauguration, I practice reading the poem aloud one last time in my hotel room, imagining four hundred thousand snowmen listening to me. I then sit quietly by myself, marking up my reading copy and preparing my binder with the poem. In the sleeve I put a hand-colored photo of my maternal grandparents, whom I had never met, wanting them to be with me in spirit at the podium. I look into the story in their eyes again, my mother’s story, my story. And I also place one of Mark’s notes that I’d saved in which he wrote: READ IT/ FEEL IT. LOSE YOURSELF IN THE POEM. A certain peace falls over me and I doze off with the poem cradled in my hands, held against my chest. Mark eventually wakes me up. I stumble to bed and fall back asleep knowing my life will never be the same after tomorrow. I don’t remember what I dreamt that night, but it wouldn’t have mattered: the line between dream and reality had blurred almost beyond recognition. My life, the poem, and the moment are one by then.

I’m not a morning person, but on January 21, I’m up and about at 6:30 a.m., wanting to savor the day that will only happen once in my lifetime. After three double espressos, I take the poem out yet again and find a solitary spot outside on the lower terrace of the hotel. For the last time I begin reading over it silently: One sun rose on us today . . . And as I do, the sun begins peeking above the rooftops as if enacting the poem, blinding me the way Robert Frost was blinded by the sun the morning of his inaugural reading decades ago. I’m not one to readily believe in mystical signs, but if there ever is a time to believe something greater is speaking to me, it is now. The sun becomes a sunflower—my sunflower again; for a moment it again revolves around the earth, around me and the poem in my hands.

I get dressed, put on the silver eagle cufflinks that Mark surprised me with as a gift the day before. I then straighten my tie and catch my eyes in the mirror. But they are not my eyes, exactly; they are the eyes of the poet who will read. It is that familiar, though infrequent, feeling that many artists speak of, that sense of being a channel, a medium possessed by the muse. By 8:30 a.m. I find myself riding in a motorcade just like in the movies, darting through the streets in a black SUV with my mother and Mark seated beside me, along with David, Nikki, and Alison. Just as we did during the sound-check rehearsal, we are escorted by staff into one of the Capitol offices—the holding room. We can barely speak, keeping a reverent silence as we wait, our eyes glued to the TV monitor panning scenes of the inaugural stage, where my mother and I will soon take our seats. A few minutes before being called out, we gather in a circle and hold hands in a prayer led by David to offer our gratitude for the beauty of the moment unfolding before us.

Arm in arm, I escort my mother down the steps to the Capitol platform. Her story began when she was born in a dirt-floor home in rural Cuba. She sold oranges to pay for schoolbooks and had only one pair of shoes, and now she is a guest of honor seated next to her son on stage with the president of the United States, members of the US Congress and Supreme Court, as well as James Taylor, Kelly Clarkson, and Beyoncé. I’m not sure if my mother was nervous, proud, bored, shocked, or all of the above. She’s always been a hard person to read. Sometimes she comes across as fearless and blunt (When they going to start dis thing? I’m freezing, she complains). Other times vulnerable (she takes my hand and tells me, Ay mijo, I wish tu padre could be here with us), sometimes animated and jovial (I used to have a figure como la Beyoncé, believe it or not, she claims, cracking a smile), other times stoic and reserved. She gives me that wide-eyed look I’ve known since I was a child, silently telling me to sit still, behave, stop fidgeting with my binder, which I flip through over and over again to make sure all the pages of the poem are there. I adjust my tie a half dozen times and glance at my wristwatch every few minutes. My mother offers me a honey-filled candy. A mother no matter the occasion—my mother, beside me as she has always been, with a piece of candy, a scolding, a kiss, a complaint, or a story to tell me.

The horns blare and the ceremony finally begins. I begin taking it all in, listening to the opening remarks by Senator Charles Schumer, followed by Myrlie Evers-Williams’s invocation. Slowly and unexpectedly, a powerful feeling of innocent pride for my country takes over. Something I hadn’t felt since grade-school days coloring dittos of the Pilgrims and Indians at Thanksgiving, or George Washington chopping down the cherry tree, or maps of the fifty states. Since I first memorized the Pledge of Allegiance and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Or the first time I read the Declaration of Independence in high school. Instead of becoming increasingly nervous as my time at the podium approaches, I become entranced by a palpable sense of reverence and unity. I am struck by the importance of the occasion, together with the hundreds of thousands of people—we—who have come to bear witness to the founding ideals of America, which come to life during the inauguration; we, who have come to remind our elected president, You are here because we are here.

In the moment I feel America standing as one, putting differences aside, and taking a deep collective breath. We pay tribute to something far bigger and more important than any one of us. And I truly feel like one of us, one of We, the people, in the echoes of the president’s inaugural speech:

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths—that all of us are created equal—is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

I embrace America in a way I never had or thought I could, feeling for the first time that I belong—truly belong—to one country. Not an imaginary ideal from TV or a nostalgic island floating in the sea of my parents’ memories, but a real, tangible place that is mine—was mine all along. I turn to my mother and whisper, “Mamá, I think we’re finally americanos.” She gives me a tender look as if saying, I know, I know. Indeed, I realize it was always one story I was born into, one story for me to discover and claim, one story to make my own.

In that instant I understand “One Today” as a gift to America. Inspired by that realization, I find the courage to open up my binder to the poem and add “for us today” at the end of the second stanza, as well as tinker with a few other phrases. Again I am struck by the trust the administration has placed in me; I could have read a radically different poem than the one they had read and selected.

Senator Charles Schumer introduces me and calls me up to the podium. My mother squeezes my shoulder. I stand more confident than I imagined I would or could be, transfixed by the moment that is no longer about me, or my poem, or my glory, but about our America. Still, I’m surprised when the president and vice president stand up to greet me and shake my hand on my way to the podium; they both whisper something in my ear that I can’t make out. But their gracious gestures speak silently to my heart, as if saying: Here is your country. This is your story. I step up to the podium, look out over the crowd: a patchwork quilt of lives, of stories spread across our ground, under our sky, beneath our one sun. I take it all in as I take one deep breath, then another. This is for them, for us, for all of us, I think to myself and begin speaking into our wind: “Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, America . . .”