My Kind of Tea Party

Wow. I scarcely know what to say. I patently avoided watching the early US mid-term election returns into the wee hours last night in Nairobi, because it was still the middle of the day in America. In recent years, whether I'm in the US or not, I've lost my appetite for incremental election coverage. Too much election analysis causes intense ennui, pour moi. I tend to surf in and out.

Well, from 8,000 miles away on November 3rd, I surfed into CNN at about 6 AM GMT +3, which was 11 PM on November 2nd in Washington, DC. Some results are still evolving in the US, and I think California and Oregon may have only just closed their polls, but it's pretty clear: "Tea Without Empathy" seems to have saturated the American Zeitgeist. Just like in the 1994 Mid-term Elections, the Republicans have regained control of the House of Representatives during the first term of an initially wildly popular Democratic President, fueled largely by Republican/Tea Party candidates. It's expected that Democrats will maintain control of the Senate, but I suppose it's still too early to declare that definitively.

I can't pretend to be shocked, though I must keep reminding myself that reading about what's going on in America, instead of actually experiencing it, makes it hard to truly weigh in. I can only form opinions based on what various news outlets consider is newsworthy, which of course skews toward the extreme. And I also have to rely on the shifting opinions and attitudes of trusted friends and acquaintances, some of whom are die-hard Obama supporters, others who've started expressing strong, cogent disappointment in him, and a few who are completely over him.

All I truly know is that these early election returns have made me a bit sad. So it was a truly lovely, blessed gift to have just gotten a Facebook message from my friend Joyce. She told me to check out a picture of her beautiful little 4-year-old daughter Talia, holding one of the Kenyan dolls I sent to her earlier this year. I collect African dolls myself, and take every opportunity to buy them for friends and/or their daughters. I stuck this one in a box of gifts for Talia and her big brother, my godson Ty, even though Joyce had told me that so far, Talia didn't really like dolls. Most of them just plain creeped her out, and she never played with them or asked her Mommy to buy one for her.

Well, apparently Talia came home from school on Election Day, 2010, picked up this doll and said, "Mommy, look at her. She's so beautiful. I'm going to take good care of her."

This makes my heart smile. Talia isn't suspicious about whether this doll was born in Kenya or America. She doesn't care whether it's black or white. It's wearing a red dress, and Talia lives in a "Red State" (North Carolina), but I know her mother's blood pumps True Blue, just like mine.

So, to get on with my life and stop obsessing over issues I can only speculate about from a vast distance, the only tea-related matters I'm going to consider for now will be the image of Talia and her Kenyan dolly having a tea-party on a crisp, sunny Fall afternoon in Raleigh.