The President & I Are Email Buddies
By Maxine Beneba Clarke
Barack and I are tight. My forthcoming poetry collection even contains a tribute: Open Letter To the President. It's not one-sided though: it's really sweet, the way my Barack randomly emails me (and seventy million other special people on his email list) asking for donations. He relies on me. He tells me all the time that I am the reason he was elected and he couldn't have done it without me, and that if I only donated another $5US, we could really make a difference: him and I, together, against the world. You and me Maxine, he says.
Here's his thanksgiving love letter to me (and seventy million other special people on his email list). My heart flutters just thinking about him thinking about me while he sat down in that oval office and penned this note:
Maxine –
Tomorrow, Thanksgiving Day, Americans across the country will sit down together, count our blessings, and give thanks for our families and our loved ones.
American families reflect the diversity of this great nation. No two are exactly alike, but there is a common thread they each share.
Our families are bound together through times of joy and times of grief. They shape us, support us, instill the values that guide us as individuals, and make possible all that we achieve.
So tomorrow, I'll be giving thanks for my family — for all the wisdom, support, and love they have brought into my life.
But tomorrow is also a day to remember those who cannot sit down to break bread with those they love.
The soldier overseas holding down a lonely post and missing his kids. The sailor who left her home to serve a higher calling. The folks who must spend tomorrow apart from their families to work a second job, so they can keep food on the table or send a child to school.
We are grateful beyond words for the service and hard work of so many Americans who make our country great through their sacrifice. And this year, we know that far too many face a daily struggle that puts the comfort and security we all deserve painfully out of reach.
So when we gather tomorrow, let us also use the occasion to renew our commitment to building a more peaceful and prosperous future that every American family can enjoy.
It seems like a lifetime ago that a crowd met on a frigid February morning in Springfield, Illinois to set out on an improbable course to change our nation.
In the years since, Michelle and I have been blessed with the support and friendship of the millions of Americans who have come together to form this ongoing movement for change.
You have been there through victories and setbacks. You have given of yourselves beyond measure. You have enabled all that we have accomplished — and you have had the courage to dream yet bigger dreams for what we can still achieve.
So in this season of thanks giving, I want to take a moment to express my gratitude to you, and my anticipation of the brighter future we are creating together.
With warmest wishes for a happy holiday season from my family to yours,
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Maxine Beneba Clarke is an Australian author and slam poet of Afro- Caribbean descent. Her short fiction collection Foreign Soil won the 2015 ABIA Award for Best Literary Fiction and the 2015 Indie Award for Best Debut Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize. Her memoir, The Hate Race, her poetry collection Carrying the World, and her first children's book, The Patchwork Bike, will be published by Hachette in late 2016.
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From ohelen on 26 November 2009 at 10.36 am
Wow! Even more personal than having Kevin Rudd as a follower on twitter.
From Mark William Jackson on 26 November 2009 at 10.57 am
What a coincidence, I was just at obama.com and he has posted 'Slam Queen & I Are Email Buddies'.
From Maxine on 26 November 2009 at 11.12 am
Tee hee. Guess he was trying to protect me by not mentioning my name. So gallant, my Barack.