This morning I turned on the inauguration ceremony with Zoe seated beside me. As we watched the dignitaries file in, I took a stab at answering her questions about the job of the president, why all these people are there to watch the ceremony, why people are crying, etc. The beauty of explaining things to a preschooler is that it forces you to strip away all the editorializing and complicated emotions we have about so many things in life, and just give the bare-bones description. One of the commentators said something about this being our first African American president, and Zoe asked what African American was. As we were discussing the concept of different skin colors and heritages, I could hear in her voice her total incomprehension for why it could possibly matter at all what color skin he has and why there hasn't been other people with different colors of skin as our president. We didn't go too far down that path, but it gave me the opportunity to imagine explaining the gross and appalling mistakes of our country's past, thinking of how you would explain this to someone who has no comprehension of racism, of the misplaced and ignorant hatred some people are capable of, why in fact the inauguration of President Obama (sorry McCain supporters, but it feels good to type that!) is such a powerful moment for so many people. We sat there watching for a few minutes and Zoe turned to me and said, "I guess I'll be president when I'm a grown up", and as I looked at my Chinese daughter, it felt pretty great to mean it when I replied, "Yep, you could do that if you want to".