Wave of Joy

I left work early--too excited by the election results to stay.
(We won???
We won!!!)

I biked over to bink & Maura's on this unseasonably warm mid-afternoon. Sitting in their backyard, we kept hearing cars honking, so we pulled up their BIDEN HARRIS lawn sign and walked over to the busy intersection near their house.

There we found the kid in this picture (Nick, age 13).
He'd been out on the corner with a sign for three hours when we arrived. Other people had joined him off and on. 

We waved signs with him until I needed to bike home before it got dark. Here's Nick, Maura, me, and a another stranger who joined us too:

(It was fortuitous I wore the Captain Kirk T-shirt to work this morning. I had not expected to hear final election results today.)

The response was amazing: most car drivers honked.
But they didn't just honk---they tapped out rhythms on their horns, they held their horns down until they were out of sight, they rolled down their windows and cheered.
They pumped their fists, gave peace signs and thumbs up (and one thumbs down), held their own signs out of sunroofs, and waved so hard their cars rocked.
Also, they took our pictures on their phones.

All kinds of Americans came by... a parade of everyone, in pick-up trucks, Teslas, SUVs, souped up cars with dark windows, beaters with rusty wheel wells––on bikes, on foot, walking their dogs. 

It really struck me that people made eye contact.
We've been so separated during Covid, it felt like people were hugging us. And smiling. Smiling like it was the happiest day of 2020. Which maybe it is. 

A lot of my happiness is simply relief at the end of Trumptimes.

But there's also this.
Welcome, Madam Vice President: