This Time Eight Years Ago

     One week from today Donald J. Trump will be our President and there’s something I keep wondering about.
      This time eight years ago, when it was Barack Obama who was about to take the oath of office as leader of our country,​

 ...I was in a very different state of mind than I am today.
    I was in a state of happy excitement.  I woke up with a smile in my heart, which would flip-flop for joy every time I recalled that Obama had won the election, and that I had been part of his campaign.

      I was on cloud nine, maybe even cloud ten.  Tom and I had an “Obama party” to celebrate with our friends, and a jubilant group we were that night.
      Which brings me to my question eight years later:  Do the people who voted for Trump feel today the way I did eight years ago?  Happy, excited, jubilant, over the moon over our new president?

       Are they  as charmed today with the new First Family,

​...as I was back then?

   Are they still keeping a campaign photo of Donald Trump on their fridge,

​...as I did for quite a while?

    Back then I was full of hope, but it was a bright, sunny hope born of the belief that the world had just become a better place and not the kind of hope I have now, the meager hope that sustains one through troubled and frightening times, hope that maybe things will work after all, maybe things won't turn out too badly, maybe no one will suffer too much.  
    This time eight years ago I felt a  wonderful optimism, a positive energy in the air.  Is there anything like that in the air now?  Maybe there is for others and I just can't feel it.
     Maybe after a presidential election we don't all breathe the same air.