Barack waves to us in Espanola. Photo by Dorie Hagler.

Last week I went to Espanola, New Mexico to hear Barack Obama speak. After dropping my boys off at kindergarten, I climbed into a minivan along with seven other Obama Mama friends from Taos. We have eighteen young children between us, the youngest of whom joined us for our adventure. We drove through the winding canyon, shimmering in autumn yellow, down to Espanola, the self proclaimed lowrider capital of the world and the town with the highest per capita heroine addiction in the nation, looking for inspiration and the best chicken tacos with guacamole in all of America.

I began volunteering at the Obama office in Taos just last week. It’s a funny little scene, complete with the requisite Taos crowd of middle aged hippies, artists, Hispanic grandmothers, pueblo kids, and ski bums already waiting for snow, with an adorable sophomore from Stanford running the joint. I doubt he had ever heard of Taos before being shipped here. And when it was announced that Obama would come to speak in Espanola, my heart welled up with the kind of ironic contentment that I have experienced only in my most New Mexican of moments. For lack of a better analogy, this event would be like seeing the pope in Fort Lauderdale – during spring break. And it would be happening only one hour’s drive away. Obamanos!

Shedding my basic black top for a ridiculously tight, cap sleeved, pink and brown Mama for Obama tee provided by my friend Dorie, I found myself looking like the thirty seven year old, wrinkled version of a pre teen Courtney Cox in Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark video. I mention this only to show how much I love Obama. And I’m not sure if it was the dry, relentless ninety degree heat that day or the aforementioned tee but I was shocked to find myself reeking of body odor within the first hour of waiting on line near the Lotaburger parking lot in Espanola. And still I wore the shirt, which again goes to show how much I love Obama.

We waited for two hours before the gates even opened, and another two inside. If someone had only mentioned that Obama was scheduled to meet with tribal leaders early that morning in Albuquerque, we would have known to sleep in and gone out for coffee. Then again, it may never occurred to me that someone as powerful as the democratic nominee for president would fall into the same time warp that everyone else does the minute they step foot in New Mexico and especially when they happen to step foot in a meeting with tribal elders. And in classic New Mexico form, following that meeting, Obama’s bus driver chose to take him up north “the scenic way.” By the time he finally arrived, my physician friend Erin had treated several people who had passed out from heat exhaustion in the crowd that had swelled to 10,000, although no one complained, because nothing ever happens on time in Espanola. And besides, the music they kept pumping through the loudspeakers was really funky and good.

The sharpshooters on the roof of the adobe church even seemed relatively relaxed. As a safety precaution, the plaza was entirely ringed by empty school buses. A single helicopter circled as black suited secret service agents dripped in the heat. As he walked out on stage, smiling widely and glowing with an electric calm, my eyes literally welled up with tears and I said a silent prayer that this man should remain safe. While clapping and clamoring for a view, the entire crowd seemed to exhale a collective sigh of relief that he had, at last, arrived.

After fumbling the name of Espanola’s mayor, prouncing it something like “Mayest” instead of Maestas, which reminded me of my original “anglo” mispronunciation of the name of the principal of the Taos Middle School where I used to teach, Reynaldo Quintana as “Mr. Quinn/tan/a” instead of “Mr. Keen/tah/nah,” Obama recovered skilfully. Bill Richardson, who had delivered a rousing introduction, seemed to be willing him through it as he sat nearby, arms folded across is chest, wearing a black shirt with a traditional bolo tie. Obama spoke primarily about the economy, following the stock market’s dramatic plunge the day before. And while it felt to me that Wall Street’s cavernous towers were entire light years and galaxies away from the Espanola plaza that day, the real message that was delivered was an unspoken one, that of calm, thoughtful, honest and gifted leadership. Here was a genuinely warm and extraordinarily intelligent human being, speaking not in condescending sound bites to a rural community but in forthright, respectful, sensible, and graceful language. Bottom line; I trusted him. In fact, the dorky middle schooler in me who played the bells in the marching band wearing a green and yellow polyester suit on equally hot and sweltering days decades ago trusted him. And even more importantly, though I would not wish the laundry list of profound problems the next president will inherit on my worst enemy, I would entrust the futures of our collective eighteen children to him.

We left the rally sun burned and dehydrated, stopping at Dairy Queen for cokes and at a roadside shack called Sugars in the riverside town of Embudo for chile cheese fries that never materialized because they ran out of food. As governor of territorial New Mexico Lew Wallace said back in the 1880′s, “Every calculation based on experience elsewhere fails in New Mexico.” I arrived home hours late, tired, hungry and undeniably grateful for my day’s filling slice of American pie. Si se puede! Viva Obama!