The inauguration of Barack Obama: the long, hard road to history

One more day and I can seal the large cardboard box on my kitchen floor and send it for a short trip to the post office and a longer trip to New York state. Precious cargo is inside this box: a cache of Barack Obama memorabilia, from Election Day newspapers to T-shirts, pins and refrigerator magnets.

Yes, there are other gifts as well — slippers, sweaters, the usual Christmas-gift fare — but the Obama stuff is guaranteed to make the biggest splash with my in-laws.

They and so many others are still blown away by the nation electing its first African-American president. You don't have to be black to feel as though your world irrevocably changed last month. But it adds an extra dose of emotion, similar to what Polish Americans must have felt when Pope John Paul II became the Catholic Church's only Polish pope.

It is a feeling that makes you save every scrap of evidence from that moment. Campaign bumper stickers, newspaper articles, photos and a host of bric-a-brac. Holding onto physical memories carries a value other than pride. Anyone who has a half-dollar the first year it was stamped with John F. Kennedy's profile — when it was made with 90 percent silver — has something of emotional and monetary value.

My in-laws aren't looking to get rich; they're looking to share in a historical sea change. This is the same reason millions of Americans are planning next month to defy a request that they stay home on Inaugural Day and mark the swearing-in of the 44th president with a bowl of popcorn in front of the television. Instead, they will travel to Washington, D.C., braving long walks and waits in freezing temperatures to behold the sight in person.

An estimated 2 million to 4 million people are expected to descend on the National Mall — not a shopping area at all but a vast parkland extending nearly two miles from the Lincoln Memorial to the steps of the U.S. Capitol. In the summer, joggers loop around the Mall and tourists stroll in and out of the museums lining the boulevard. But in January, it is nothing short of treacherous.

An e-mail making the rounds is meant to be humorous but borders on serious as it warns elderly people to think twice about lengthy bus trips to the nation's capital and even lengthier walks to the inaugural site. There will be no lawn chairs, no blankets, no place to take the load off.

Nearby hotels have long been sold out. Luck will be defined as getting a bed in a nearby state — Maryland, Virginia or Delaware. Churches are sponsoring buses but a plan to cordon off an as-yet undetermined security perimeter to all traffic promises a long walk after a long bus ride. D.C.'s model subway train is predicting four-hour waits but there is a silver lining: Inaugural Day fare cards certain to be a hit with memorabilia collectors.

For some, we've made history and now its back to ending two wars, bailing out one failing industry after another and holding onto dreams such as affordable health care for all. It isn't that the people spending this Christmas making plans to travel to next month's inauguration don't understand the long road ahead. But the elderly person hobbling on canes to get within a mile of the 44th president is doing it to see something else. They want to see with eyes unfiltered by a television screen the realization of a dream they were prepared to carry unrealized into death.

I get the sudden run on thick coats and socks, warm gloves and comfortable shoes. I see why people who know D.C.'s flat expanse will offer few vantage points to see any of the swearing-in ceremony are going to that city anyway.

Some of those travelers will be from the Puget Sound region. That makes for a lengthy, expensive trek to witness an oath completed in minutes.

I propose that afterward, we tour D.C.'s broad streets and gaze at the elegant Federalist-style buildings. Take special note of the many blocks once engulfed in flames during the 1968 riots in which 1,200 buildings were burned causing, in today's dollars, $156 million in damage. The city was once under the largest federal occupation, now host to the nation's first black president. We can keep warm by marveling at how much change has come in the decades since.

Lynne K. Varner's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is lvarner@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to www.seattletimes.com/edcetera