"We will not miss the inauguration," Teresa Taylor assured me. She had come all the way from Pensacola, Florida, but at that moment was sharing a step with me in the museum. "This is the most important moment in my life besides having children." Well, it's kind of fitting that we'll be trapped in the African art museum while Obama is being sworn in, I shoot back. "I didn't even know what it was," she replies, laughing. "The guy over there just told me."Moments later, as the clock neared 11:30, we saw daylight and broke for the Mall. Standing by the Smithsonian Institute's hallowed red brick building, I got to be a part of history. People around me cheered, waved flags, hugged, cried, snapped pictures, bowed their heads, and soaked everything in. It was like New Year's crossed with a commencement or a revival.While all attention was focused on one man, the real beauty of the moment was that we got to share it with each other-friends, neighbors, strangers, countrymen, etc."To me, the hordes are the best part of it-I personally believe that you only get change if you have mass numbers of people coming together," Albert Bridgewater, a resident of nearby West Falls Church, Virginia, told me. " I grew up in a segregated United States and to see so many people, so many races and ethnicities coming together to welcome this man who once would not have been able to go into a restaurant in this town and get served is truly an amazing transformation for the United States."
