inserting oneself into history

The Inauguration was cold. 

There was a slight echo after each phrase was unfurled across the mall. I stared at everyone's winterjacketed backs, and brushed the flakes of dirt off of my mittens. When I was there, in my hurting clenched body and skin-below-the-nose-stinging face, I kept thinking about the moment of another future day, a warm curled body and a soft, slightly smiling face. In connecting myself to this absolutely guaranteed future moment, I collapsed time like a cardboard box: flattened, something to travel back and forth across. I listened to our President's voice and focused on it while trampling between present and future selves. I knew that this now-self would have her moment of glory, days later, when fatigued muscles had gained back strength, when mittens were not involved. I knew I would think of that self and enjoy it, try to learn something. I knew I would picture a bird's-eye view of the crowd we were in - the crowd we are in - at this exact second, voices making statements all around us. Heavy, gloved clapping, solemn and slow for our President, letting his words pelt down to the small spaces of ground in between us, take root.