Cracked Window

I made my last donation to Barack Obama last night. Not that he needs the cash at this stage of his campaign, a fund-raising juggernaut that politicians and political scientists will study for years to come. My wife and I have made modest donations six or seven times. With victory appearing all but certain, this was the first motivated purely out of selfishness.

Donating by midnight put me in a drawing. The prize: an expense-paid trip for two to be among ten people backstage with the next president of the United States at his campaign headquarters in Chicago on Election Night.

Imagining that possibility, seeing Suzame and me with Obama and his family, was too much to resist. It also seemed like a good luck omen, as was the purchase of an Obama painting Friday. (The painting, displayed in our home office window, is getting many smiles and words of praise from passersby.) Such omens, though irrational, ease the intensifying tension as we reach the campaign’s end.

“What’s in the cup?” asks the woman x-raying our carry-on bags at Orlando International Airport. Our cross-country trip home to Portland is not beginning well.

“Our little boy’s water. It’s his sippy cup,” says my wife, Suzame.

“You say it’s water. But I don’t know it’s water,” the woman says, her tone curt and accusatory, as if an interrogation has begun.

“At other airports this has never been been a problem,” Suzame says. “They must have different rules.”

“The rules are the same everywhere,” the woman says. She gestures to a colleague, who takes the cup to a table and displays tools for detecting the presence of explosives. But it’s a sham — he tests nothing.

“She’s nutty,” he says softly so his fellow-employee won’t hear, and gives Suzame the cup.

It’s hard not to spot a woman riding a bike and wearing a skirt. I mean that strictly from a safety standpoint. After all, it’s a benefit given how cyclists and motorists in Portland struggle at times to share the road.

Don’t believe the safety bit? You shouldn’t.

I‘m a terrorist. No doubt about it. I didn’t want to go over to the Dark Side, but some forces are too powerful to resist.

The Obama Fist Bump nailed me, or OFB as we converts call it.

It happened today on a Portland pedestrian bridge over Interstate 5. I was among throngs of people walking bikes across the Failing Street Bridge. We were part of Sunday Parkways, a trek along six miles of streets closed to cars for six hours.

Wheeling his bike toward me beneath a gray sky was a harmless looking dude. A skinny summer-time Santa with an Obama sign on his bike. Behind me, Suzame, my wife, saw the sign and yelled out the candidate’s name over the din of cars streaming past beneath us. Santa stopped next to me and held out his clenched fist.

Unlike past wars, the Iraq war is an abstraction. We rarely glimpse the unspeakable suffering. Most of the media have lost interest. Some stalwarts remain, chronicling events beyond our comprehension. As much as I hate this war, I’ve never let what happens there penetrate my comfortable life here. Until now.

Reality intruded last night when Suzame, my wife, showed me this photograph:

Happy Father’s Day. From my youngest son, two months shy of three, comes a gift. “I’ll draw a picture for Dad,” Atticus tells his mother, Suzame. He conjures up Everyman confronting the wonders and perplexities of the world. Our little oracle comments on life like I never did at his age. Take this recent gem: “Mommy, don’t flush my poopy down the potty. You’ll stop it up.” A few minutes later: “Thanks for plunging it way.” Almost makes me wish potty training wasn’t nearing an end.

Tom Jones haunts me. The well-preserved and über manly entertainer, whose twitching hips persuade otherwise demure women to part with their panties, has gyrated into the sacred halls of my bedroom.

Last night, for the third consecutive day, my wife Suzame sang snippets of “She’s a Lady.” We were in bed. This the woman who rolled her eyes at the prospect of taking her mother to see Jones in Portland as a Mother’s Day gift. And I the husband who agreed she should spend a bundle to get good seats, ensuring her mom would have a memorable evening.

Before the concert, Suzame spoke as if it was impending drudgery. Not her thing, she said. Her favorite music, like mine, veers from the mainstream. Our concert tastes don’t include Vegas-style entertainers. At the time, I doubted Suzame could have named one of Jones’ signature songs. I warned her women go ga-ga over him. She seemed only vaguely aware of the underwear-throwing zealotry that Jones incites.