Here I Stand

Turning into my future

Face to face with my future, here I stand. Fourteen years later, almost to the day, here I stand, marking the day I lost my eyesight, Labor Day week-end, 1998.

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,"
.

Remembering: the losses in my family life at that time, unrelated, perhaps and perhaps not, to losing my eyesight. Book publishing pressures.

And, once again, an American president’s mendaciousness, bold faced lies, to the American people; Bill Clinton, not long after his infamous Map Room speech. 

Here I stand: yearning, an American citizen, joined with other Americans with hopes and dreams for a beautiful future.

Here I stand: remembering. Loss, disappointment, anger, grief, coping while another president, Richard Nixon, lies.

Here I stand, wiser, matured, no longer dependent on presidents to be good daddies, banner carriers for my outgrown childhood images of Washington and Lincoln, cheery trees cut down, as symbols of leadership. A daughter, a wife, a mother, a teacher, a healer, a guide, a researcher, listening to stories that build pathways to peace; hopes and dreams from other passionate Americans for a country united in beauty and service.

Here I stand, noting a collective maturing. Disappointment, loss, resentment, anger, grief, short-lived, transformed into personal actions, decisions to reject deceit and find a better way. No longer the naïve children we once were, like myself, raised to believe in the virtues of presidents long gone

No longer the adolescents inspired by Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr, the seekers lifted by Gandhi.

Here I stand and here we stand on our own two feet, rooted in American soil, united in our yearnings for ideals and values we have grown on our own. The embodiment of the heritage of the American Dream as it sings in our own hearts and our souls; grown up now to turn our hopes and our dreams into realities.

No longer are we eager young idealists or wide-eyed believers. Still our ideals are intact. And, we are together – from the bottom up, groundswell builders of our collective futures.

Here I stand, grateful beyond words and measure that I can see this, but even more that I/we have never lost our vision.

America the beautiful, I am so grateful to stand on this soil.

America, the beautiful, here I/we stand turning into our future, spiraling upward with our own good sense.

Labor Day means this to me.

Here I stand.

And, “Here I stand,” says she, greeter for my grandparents with their hopes and their dreams for the freedoms we have come to expect.