It is a dreamy day in late autumn, with the sun angled low across the sky. A breeze sends translucent leaves spinning through the air. My dead mother visited me the night before in a dream. We were at a farmer’s market in the Quad Cities area, not far from where I grew up and where my mother died. I had with me my cat, Camille, along with Mama. At one point the cat broke free to go to the nearby bank of the Mississippi River to inspect it. She edged right to the water, and then stuck her head in. Her rather ample rump was in the air, facing me, and her head was under. I dashed over to pluck her from the water, and she fell fully in. I was able to grab her and get her back to the car in my arms, and Mama was laughing at the spectacle. I don’t remember much else, except arriving home with Camille to tell Jessica how badly behaved our cat had been. But the dream had come to me on the first night of Days of the Dead, a thing I hadn’t noted until Jessica reminded me that there was a likely connection. “She came to visit you,” she said. And I believe it to be true.

Days later, at about 11:00 p.m. on Nov. 4, we became collectively aware that America had elected Barack Obama to be our nation’s 44^th president. It seemed perfectly right that our family had just completed several days of honoring and celebrating the lives of those who had passed. Madelyn Dunham, Obama’s grandmother, herself died just after the holiday, on Nov. 3, at the age of 86. Then came Election Day, and with almost no transition we went barreling full-speed back into life itself. We suddenly contemplated a renewed national life full of promise, energy, and – yes – hope, that watchword of his campaign, disparaged by foes but still such a life preserver for a people facing troubles writ large.

As we watched early returns at home, it was emotionally aggravating to see McCain’s initial total larger than Obama’s. Reasoning be damned, though I knew he would win (my personal prediction was a “minimum” of 360 electoral votes, I will proudly assert here), I began to fret and imagine skullduggery of the highest order. It wasn’t hard, after the rancid outcomes in 2000 and 2004. And Dick Cheney was not only still alive under his rock; he had slithered forth onto the trail for Sen. McCain. But I’d read the reassuring articles about how many pivotal Sec. of State offices were now held by Democrats rather than Republicans willing to conveniently expunge tens of thousands from the rolls just in time for the polls to open. Not to mention the numerous pre-election polls that showed Obama trending up in the wake of his 30-minute campaign ad, while McCain’s arrow pointed straight down, to the tune of about a point a day.

McCain’s campaign began to disintegrate when he “boldly” announced he was “suspending” it because the markets were too volatile and he had to race back to Washington to hover in the corridors while committees he was not part of met to try to find a solution. It was a badly embarrassing episode, not least because his own colleagues didn’t much welcome the intrusion. Obama dutifully followed, but said he would be at the final debate, scheduled for that Friday, regardless of the success of these meetings in D.C. McCain threatened to forego the debate, and it just killed him. Americans were eager to see both men again, especially against the backdrop of this fearsome economic earthquake that had jolted us all. McCain’s choice was not perceived as bold, but rather gimmicky at best, and panicky/volatile/weird at worst.

Then, at the debate itself, McCain used one Joe the Plumber to open a fusillade of accusations – Obama was, he said, willing to take the nation in a dangerously “socialist” direction. He was vying for the job of “redistributionist in chief,” said McCain. Again, it didn’t work. The viral video of the rope line wherein Obama uttered the fateful words “spread the wealth around a little bit…” showed the full story, in which Obama spoke with great mastery of economic facts and our current situation. There was nothing socialist about his comments – they were strictly on tax policy. Because the power of the Internet resides in part in its freedom from editing by any political campaign operative, people who were worried got to see the whole thing, and it simply revealed Sen. McCain and Joe the Plumber to be manipulative on the one hand, and used on the other.

Those two things set the stage for Obama’s stunning 364-vote electoral hammering of McCain. Other things, while subsidiary, helped. Chief among these lesser items was Sarah Palin. It is arguable she was the single major factor in his loss, but I contend his decision to risk looking erratic by behaving erratically in response to the economic crisis was far worse in the eyes of independents and undecided voters. Yet the fact remains: John McCain did pick Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska to be his running mate. She did perform with a perfect, naked absence of factual knowledge in several interviews, and from there she did slide into a willingness to say any awful thing that occurred to her in an effort to chop Barack Obama off at the knees in her tour of swing states. She proved herself to be an adept demagogue, a hella-shopper extraordinaire, and a woman of undeniable stamina. But the cloud over all her performances was her own lack of knowledge and experience, and she was as liberal in dispensing proof of these as she was in dispensing character attacks on the Democratic nominee. In the end she fell flat, and the critical groups of voters McCain needed were driven to vote for Obama in part by the spectacle of her utter lack of fitness for the job of Vice President of the United States.

That pretty much takes us to Grant Park, 11:00 p.m. EST, on election night, when the race was called for Barack Obama. I whooped up a storm, pretty much ignoring the fact that Baby, our cockatiel, was covered in the room next door and would undoubtedly turn upside-down on her perch and hiss at all the racket. Tim, Jessica, and I clapped and cried, further aggravating the other diva animal of the household, our cat Camille. She opened one eye into a cynical, aggravated slit, and peered at our merrymaking. Then she slumped back into her fat, sleeping self at the foot of the bed. I took some phone calls. I stayed up late, watching every return, glum that the electoral vote still seemed quite far from my magic guesstimate of 360. I had a glass of wine after 11:00 p.m., just not something that happens these days. And we all felt it, and spoke of it. In an instant, we felt everything shift. We felt a sense of hope – and, yes, of concomitant responsibility. We were, in our hearts, prepared to be asked to do something – whatever small things we might, as one household in Iowa, be able to do to help turn this country around. We knew we would be willing and able to do it. We wrote our new president a blank check – for our time, our talents, and our energies as they may be needed in weeks and years to come.

Rarely in my lifetime have I felt such a personal level of investment in the workings of our federal government, so far away and so enormous. But that night, as Barack and Michelle Obama and their two daughters claimed the stage at Grant Park, that distant government became ours again, and we felt the stirring of long-neglected opinions and hopes for its revival as a force for goodness here and in the world. The current occupants of the White House and their minions have besmirched the reputation of this nation – they have labored hard, in layers of darkness and obscurity they have expanded at every opportunity, and with dwindling oversight, to do so. Their accomplishments have almost totally fallen into the column of negativity if not outright calumny, and it will be the work of a generation of historians to tally all the misdeeds to their credit. It took all the energy of a young man and his family, and a huge campaign with millions of small donors creating the largest war chest in presidential campaign history, to beat back this entrenched misuse of executive power. Obama brings us to this place where hope is, again, possible. Even as he moves forward into his new role and plans for the transition, we are grateful to have experienced just this much, and we are right to enjoy it.