Family

I love theater.

Denied for eight years, and nursing fears – by necessity – that four more years of denial lurk in the tunnel, the Democrats are putting hurt feelings, bruised egos, nurtured ambitions and animosities in the strong box. Nomination by acclamation? Presto! We are family.

We are family. We are that family that loves and fights, splits and reunites, cracks under the pressure and spackles over. We are the wounded that want to heal, the disgusted that want to believe, and the failed who want to rise again. We are the ones who know what the right thing is, and while we don’t want to wait for it, do so anyway. We are the dreamers who just won’t stop believing.

Tonight, Joe Biden accepted his nomination for Vice-Presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, and I was thrilled again. It wasn’t his speech. Yes, it was filled with dreams and promises – the stuff of campaigns. He praised both the winners and the losers of this election cycle. He castigated the opposition (certainly not harshly enough for the barking pundits). He evoked the golden wisdom of the past and the brightness of the future. All that was nice, but it was not what touched me.

What came through for me was the family. And, not just his family, but our family. Yes, his love for his wife and children were in the forefront. His anecdotes of his mother (teary-eyed in the audience) made we want to invite her to lunch. But it was after he waited (a bit awkwardly) on stage for Barack Obama’s “surprise” appearance, and his kids and grandkids flooded the stage, that I saw that what he was really talking about is our family: our dreams, our efforts, our struggles, our “rising up” to step back on the good path.

As Joe Biden said tonight: "We fall down, and we get back up again.” Together. And, that's worth reaching for.

Say, was that Keenan from Keenan & Kel in the crowd?