I just got back from a very inspiring hike to watch the sun set on a mountaintop in Southern California on Dr. Martin Luther King Day. On the hike I was overwhelmed with emotions and thought that it would be best to come home and attempt to work it all out by writing it down.

I think about my parent’s interracial marriage and all that they fought for. I think about the church that refused to marry them and the one that had the courage to stand up and recognize the love that they shared. I think about the priest that refused to baptize me when I was born with a heart defect. I think of how blessed I was to grow up in California, a somewhat tolerant place when it comes to unity and understanding.

Tomorrow makes me think of my ancestors, some who came to America from Europe voluntarily as immigrants to build a better life, some who were born on this land only to have it violently taken away from them, and some who were forced to come to America in slavery.

I think about my father who didn’t live to witness tomorrow. I think of him growing up in the south and all that he witnessed and endured as a young man. I think of him riding on the back of the bus and being treated like a second-class citizen. I’ll always wonder how he would describe the way that tomorrow would make him feel.

I’m thinking about my mother, an educator and woman whom has always fought hard for equal rights. A woman who once told me that where she grew up in the Midwest, it was so segregated that she didn’t see an African American in person until she was in her early teens. I think about what it must have been like for her to fall in love with and marry my father, an African American man in a time of so much intolerance and start a family.

All of my personal history comes to mind for many reasons, but perhaps most of all, I feel that we all have extraordinary personal and historical ties to what we are all going to be feeling tomorrow. Tomorrow comes a day when this country will feel as together and tolerant than ever. A day when we will all be given a chance to move forward with what’s been given to us. Tomorrow brings us a President who truly represents all of us. Our trials, tribulations, triumphs and mistakes. Tomorrow means to me that we will be given another chance to live together, work together and truly celebrate our oneness. Peace, CP