Will my children ever know what today meant? They will grow up never knowing it wasn’t possible for a black man to be President of the world’s superpower. Another thing they’ll take for granted – along with their mother being able to vote, our Irish nation in peace with itself, apartheid something from a fantasy novel.

My two girls will grow up thinking – knowing – they can achieve any position, any career, any desire they have, not only because that is what my husband and I will tell them every day, but because all kinds of people before them have fought to give them that future.

What battles will my children fight? What barriers will they batter down? What ceilings will they shatter? I don’t know, but I do know that today is another step towards ensuring they will be able to fight, will have the courage to battle, and can reach high enough to shatter.

And really, in such a historic moment like this, it takes a child to put it all in perspective.
Recently we made a big deal of Daisy throwing all her dummies in the bin. When she went searching for them a short time later, I had to tell her the bin man had taken them away. She contemplated this information, pondering I suppose, just what a bin man was having never seen one.

This morning my husband told her it was a special day. A black man had just become the most important person in the world. She looked a little put out. “Yes,” she said, none too pleased, “and he took my dummies away!”