In addition, this past week in particular has been a little overwrought; I once again broke my oft-insulted left femur, right between the hip and knee prostheses. A couple of very husky and enthusiastic orthopedic surgeons at the Hitchcock Clinic worried it back into place and reinforced the whole femur from knee to hip with a titanium bar. It looks really neat in the X-rays – rather like the ventilated rib on a skeet gun, with all those screws holding it in place – and I’m looking forward to avoiding any more alterations. Meanwhile, however, the opiates and analgesics chasing each other through my system have probably enhanced some feelings and removed some controls. On top of that, the consciousness of Mother’s sacrifices, in the middle of the winter’s coldest spell, trucking from place to place a grumbling, groaning pile of virtually useless life form, is constantly before me. So I’ve allowed for those possibilities, as well, in locating the source of newly surfacing feelings.

And I think I’ve got it. It may be partly those reasons, but it’s much more. I see it in the faces of hundreds of thousands of Americans who are daring to believe, for literally the first time in three hundred years, that anything may be possible for them. Geez! There I go again! I can hardly type this. I see it in the tears on Jesse Jackson’s cheeks in Grant Park on Election Night. (To catch so much in one image! The photographer ought to get a Pulitzer.) I hear it in the words of an old black preacher, scarred by the truncheons and police dogs of Birmingham: “I knew this day was comin’ someday, but Great God A’mighty! I never once thought I’d live to see it myself!” Nor did I, Brother.

By any objective analysis, should anyone undertake to test the notion, there’s good news and there’s bad news all the while. It’s just seemed, during the past few years that the doom and gloom have predominated; the image of the clouds of Mordor is irresistible. Still stunned by the brutal assassinations of our earlier hopes, many of us hardly seemed able to dream of anything but endless hard-fought, expensive, small victories in the battle to realize the promises of our founding principles. We seemed to have shrunk as a people, pursuing our individual interests above those of the community and defending only those components of the Bill of Rights most important to us. The constant parsing and punditry of the media had made us wary, even cynical of the notion of change – rather like someone enjoying a wonderful wine only to be told by some self-appointed expert, “Well, it’s interesting, of course, but it’s not really a very good wine.”

On top of that, we learned slowly – too slowly – about a vast covert army of our own fellow citizens deployed to capture, interrogate, torture if necessary, and hold indefinitely foreign nationals suspected of harboring ill will toward us; to weave secretly into the once-inviolate fabric of our domestic communications, checking even our library records. Those of us who remembered the Second World War – the defeat of two powerful empires on two fronts on opposite sides of the globe in only three and a half years – couldn’t help but wonder: Was our blood running thin? Those of us who remembered Vietnam wondered why our leaders were lying to us again. Why, in fact, were our leaders and our media no greater or nobler than we?

The discontent was inchoate and tentative for several years. The media, at first cowed or bamboozled into polite disagreement, gradually realized they were being barred from the sources of information that are their lifeblood, and began to find their proper critical role. Thousands of us every day joined a vast, unfocused search for a spokesman for our discontent and desires. And then came the Iowa caucuses. I’ve never cared for slogans and cheerleading, but suddenly it seemed possible that if enough of us truly believed it and worked for it, yes, we could! – that what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” might prevail.

I’m writing this while watching incredible numbers of excited citizens streaming past barricades to get places among the crowds at the Inauguration. It’s below freezing in Washington this morning, but nobody seems to mind; many are sitting in great, happy pig piles for warmth.

And suddenly there seems to be good news almost everywhere. There’s the incredible image of the survivors of the Hudson River plane crash, standing on the wings as the water taxis and Coast Guard zoom up to take them off. There’s an article in Sports Illustrated about Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s first Special Olympics years ago in a nearly empty stadium with only a few competitors. The movement now spans the globe, and the stories of individual Special Olympians are – dammit, there I go again!

The job of a leader is to help people see what unsuspected effort they’re capable of. Remember the coach or teacher who helped you transcend your notions of your limits? The job of the Presidency is no different. Though “eloquence” took a few sarcastic hits during the campaign, that’s what’s needed now. Show us the goal, sir, give us hope, and we’ll – Geez! There I go again!