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Last night, the Boylan family– Jenny, Deedie, Zach, and Sean– sat around the television in our house in Maine, watching the election returns. Our black labs were asleep on the floor. We had fires roaring in the woodstove in the kitchen, and another one smouldering in orange embers in the living room. Deedie made pumpkin bread in the oven and as we watched the returns come in, state after state, east to west, the house filled with the smell of molasses and cake.

Sean, age 12, fell asleep in his chair about 10:30. We ate the pumpkin bread, steaming hot, and drank glasses of milk. I had a couple Bass Ales. Just shy of 11, Deedie poured herself a glass of Redbreast Irish whiskey.

When MSNBC called the election for Obama at 11 PM, we hollared and whooped, and Sean woke up, not sure where he was, and he looked around at his family and his home for a moment as if he had arrived, somehow, in a new universe, as if the world around him had changed during the brief time he had been asleep.

We all fell into each others arms, and I started to cry. I had been unable to believe that the moment I had hoped for had finally come– right up until the end I suspected that things would go the other way. I don’t know– maybe it’s being a New Englander, or being a Red Sox fan for all these years– I’ve seen the ball go through our teams legs time and time again.

And yet, this time it happened. I wondered what Deedie’s father, the late Tom Finney– national campaign manager for Eugene McCarthy in 68, and Muskie in 72–would have had to say. In 1968, Deedie’s mother, in Chicago for the disastrous convention, had to be locked in her room to keep her from going to Grant Park to march with the young people protesting the war; now, forty years later, Grant Park was the scene of a rally and a speech and 100,000 people filled with joy and hope.

I did not want to go to sleep; I wanted this moment to last forever. But at last the boys fell into their beds. D. and I climbed into bed, and D. did the NYTimes crossword puzzle at 12:30 at night, still so wound up. I took off my glasses and closed my eyes, and thought of the thing the old Civil War soldiers used to say, a generation after Gettysburg– Was it not real? Was it not real?

Long Pond, Maine. Directly in front of the Boylan house, October 10, 2008.

These are the Golden Days, I thought, as I drove home this morning, after dropping my son off at school. I mean this not only because it’s the peak of the fall leaf season here in Maine; it’s also a particularly lovely time in my life. I’m certain that I cannot put this all into words, writer that I am supposed to be. But I can say that my heart feels lifted up.

Part of it is my family: we have managed to get ourselves into 9th and 7th grade and my sons are thriving: acting in plays, scoring goals in soccer, crashing the mountain bike. Part of it is that I’m back in the classroom after a year or more away, and you know: it’s good to be working with students again. Turns out, I am not a bad teacher, at least I hope not, and being back at work has been good for me emotionally, which I did not really expect. (and yes, NOT being chair of the department, or director of creative writing, removes a whole layer of stress).

Part of it is being busy– I have a ton of new, short pieces coming out, and the new FALCON QUINN series to work on (started book two this month; book one to be published just about a year from now.)

And part of it is–ready for this?– still learning what it means to be a woman, and feeling content, even excited by what I learn and feel. Going to Southern Comfort was powerful for me this year, although volatile (as I wrote on another thread). Some kind of lows the first day or two, and I think I embarassed myself forever with my friends Marci Bowers and her girlfriend Carol, because one night I got so sad in their presence I just had to send myself to bed. But Donna Rose, god bless her heart, really helped me to see something clearly– in her speech she said, “Trans people are NOT normal– we’re BETTER THAN NORMAL, because of all we’ve had to go through in order to be authentic. We have to let go of shame.” I think this helped me understand that I’ve internalized a lot of self-loathing; sometimes I think I put out all this dark energy because I carry around guilt and melancholy, and I’m beginning to think I need to get over myself, and feel good.

When I turned 50 this summer (you can read the entry if you like, late June) I made a resolution to “let go of begrudgement” and grievance. And yet I haven’t thought about the grievance I’ve internalized, all those years of thinking I’m a loser, or some sorta hideous zombie thing. I have been all over the world, and heard a thousand tales, and cried tears enough to tell you one thing: I ain’t no zombie.

Or maybe, what the fuck. I am a zombie. And there ain’t NOTHIN wrong with zombie.

I don’t know exactly what causes this sense, but it’s something that’s been building in me for a while; maybe I learned it this last year while I had the chance to get a little closer to my family. Maybe it’s something I’ve felt as I turned the corner of 50 and now look into the future and feel, excitedly, that the futur