To say the air on Tuesday morning was electric with anticipation is not only cliché, but grossly inadequate to describe that morning. In physical sensory terms it was cold, damp, crisp and smelled of rain, pavement and pine tar. A few birds flitted about, but their beaks remained quiet and I wondered if perhaps they could sense our human fervor as I watched groups of people standing and waiting to cast ballots we have all waited 21 months to finally fill.

My polling place is in a neighbor’s garage and we all know each other. We often wait in line with our dogs and our kids chatting over the fresh coffee. Long lines for us usually mean a 5-minute wait. This morning, however, it was 20 and the chatter was low; too much to think about in those last 20 minutes.

I watched as 2 women came out of their voting booths crying. Some of us looked around in confusion and mumbled concern, but the man checking my ID told us that several people had come out crying. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. “Everyone’s just so damn happy and relieved to finally be here.” And we all heaved sighs of agreement.

But now that our ballots have finally been cast, we still had all day to wait for the results. All day. All day to sit and hit refresh on cnn.com. All day to sit in front of a TV waiting for results to come in from the East Coast. All day to listen to the scenarios of what states are needed for each candidate to win. All day to hear political pundits hypothesize over each party’s campaign. All day to watch the rest of the country sitting and waiting together.

At 5’oclock they began to announce various states; Maine, Connecticut, Vermont, act. And my phone also began to ring. Calls between my mother and sister and even a few conference calls with all 3 of us filled the night. My sister’s Republican husband had put the house on a news ban, so as the states were announced, my mother & I would call. Eventually he got irritated with the constant phone calls and went to bed. Oddly enough it was round the time Ohio was declared for Obama.

Our last conference call was just before 8’oclock. We were waiting for the announcement on the west coast states. My sister was finally able to watch CNN and on Mom’s end I could hear Dad yipping & hollering over local Arizona measures. We all shushed each other up to hear the results and as Washington, Oregon and California all came in for Obama and declared him President-Elect a flood was unleashed as we all wept great heaving gobs of joyous, heartfelt gratitude and relief.

I cannot clearly recall what the rest of my night was like other than a lot of tears. And I do mean a lot of tears. I cried not simply because of the incredible historical significance of Barack Obama’s election, but because now the last 8 years can finally be healed! We are no longer a country manipulated by the dogmatic fears of others, but rather motivated in our own hopes for our country as a whole. It is a spiritual movement on a political level not seen before. And that is a very powerful patriotic salve that should not be wasted.