I remember as a four year old child, being with my Abuelita in the backyard of her home on the west side of Chicago tending to her beautiful garden. She would snip and trim stems from her perpetually overgrowing and full rosebushes while I would hold the basket filled with the discarded stems. As she tended to the lush and full buds she would talk about how I would grow, warmed by the sun like her roses. I would blossom and be as beautiful to look at as the roses we were tending.

She would say,’ you will be beautiful but you will also need to be smart’. She would look at me and laugh, mussing my little curly head. She would say, ‘you’re like your uncle, face always buried in a book. Learn all you can, know as many things as you can know, never be afraid to try anything, because then no one can tell you otherwise, you will know what is true’.

I grew up with grandparents that operated within a space of two absolutes. First, that hard work would pay off. Second that nothing was more important than getting an education. It would be my mother that would tell me, ‘you can be anything you want, anything is possible for your life’.

This morning when my alarm clock went off, the first song played was Whitney Houston’s rendition of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’. I remember when Ms. Houston first sang this, to the troops during Desert Storm. I thought, here is a black woman singing our National Anthem, to soldiers standing watch to defend my freedoms. And now, here is a woman singing the song of my country that will today now have a black man in charge. As a nation, how great have we become?

It was then that I realized why these days leading up to this tremendous moment have been so emotional for me. Up to this day, all the times my family repeated the mantra that anything is possible, I would believe it, up to a point.  I would believe that, on a smaller, local, manageable scale I could be anything I wanted to be. I could achieve great things in my life, within reason.

I believed it within reason because I was working  toward a standard of excellence that did not reflect me. It might reflect my ideologies, my political opinions, but it didn’t reflect any part of my culture. I couldn’t entirely believe it because I had nothing in common with that standard, other than a similar biological makeup in that I bled red, digested food, felt pain and used my brain to think in the same ways.

This has changed. I now reflect that standard because the man being sworn in today looks like me (we are both bi-cultural), and has had his formative years during a time of great upheaval and change, the 1960s (we are a year apart in age). The leader of the largest democracy on the planet and one of the last superpowers in our world, looks like me and while we’ve had vastly different experiences as adults, he has never lost sight of his race, his culture and his responsibility to good citizenship.

Today, for the first time in the 236 years this nation has been in existence, we all breath the clean, crisp air of first class citizenship. We have taken on the responsibility of our government, no longer dismissed to PACs and other special interests. We have exercised our fundamental right to choose who will lead us and he just happens to be a black man.

Mr. Obama has shattered a glass ceiling with a message of hope and hard work that allowed all of us the chance to help him break it. We, as people of color, have earned a special and precious opportunity. It is the opportunity to help him create a new standard that includes all of us of all colors, genders, persuasions and beliefs to work towards a common goal of excellence. A new standard that we are now privy to but also must be responsible for developing and tending and maintaining.

I make a promise today, to myself and all that know me and will know me. I will be an active citizen of this great land where freedom is measured by the character of each of us and our actions toward one another. I will roll up my sleeves and willingly work hard  to do my part to fix the wrongs that still exist, but exist in a very different paradigm. I will sing my nations anthem with pride as a newly minted, first class citizen of this, my United States of America.