THE sound was a petrifying, thunderous roar which I heard in waves coming from far, far behind me. I hadn’t heard anything like it before and I doubt I’ll hear anything like it again.
I was in the crowd in front of the Capitol Building in Washington DC and in moments I’d witness history, when Barack Obama would be sworn in as the 44th president of the United States.
Behind me, stretched as far as I could see back to the Washington Monument, were millions of people. And they were chanting – the name Barack Obama and the phrase ‘Yes We Can!’.
Myself and my then fiancée, who’s also a journalist, had arrived the night before on a packed bus from New York’s Chinatown.
My American friend had found us a room for the night and we’d gone out in Georgetown with friends of hers – who happened to be big supporters of the Democratic party.
To say it was a celebratory night is a massive understatement. There was a palpable, jovial, excited atmosphere – bars were packed, people were celebrating and we even overheard people quoting lines and channelling characters from The West Wing.
America was on the brink of something great and we were right in the middle of it, wide-eyed outsiders trying (and failing) to understand what it meant that America was to have its first black president in a matter of hours – and to have a Democrat back in the Oval Office again.
After a couple of hours sleep, before dawn myself, my fiancée, and my friend made our way to the subway.
I’d been warned about the Washington January cold – there’s even an urban myth that a chill killed off president William Henry Harrison, who died 31 days after his inauguration.
It’s more likely that the White House’s contaminated water supply killed Harrison, but that doesn’t change the fact Washington cold has to be experienced to be believed.
I’d wrapped up in several layers and brought a newspaper to sit on – but still the cold of DC was nothing I could have prepared for, nothing at all like the dusting of snow we get in Northern Ireland.
It was 6am and the subway station was jammed with people. But the party had already started – the chorus of ‘Yes We Can!’ rang out and hoarse subway workers screamed ‘Walk through the gates! Don’t stop moving!’ as the crowd moved en masse through the turnstiles.
There were older African-American couples in huge fur coats, there were young people in beanie hats and parents with young children.
And I was in the middle of it all. A white thirty-something from Derry’s Waterside, mercifully shielded from the Troubles by fate, time and geography.
I was part of something that I could never, ever possibly understand. Who knows what some of the people in the train station had gone though in life – all because of the colour of the skin.
Barack Obama was a metaphor for their future. My soon-to-be husband and I were lucky to have press passes picked up the previous day after arriving in Washington.
So we had to part ways as our Bostonian friend had to ‘make do’ with watching history along with the crowds.
Surprisingly we found a place inside the security barrier – Bullfeathers, the nickname of president Theodore Roosevelt – open for breakfast.
We ate buffered by grey uniformed American soldiers, and were served by a waiter called Nixon (yes, really).
More security checks followed inside the echoey, marbled halls of the Rayburn House Office Building.
After X-ray machines, pat downs and passport checks we were outside again. A soldier glanced at our colour coded passes and he kept walking.
As members of the foreign press, we’d expected to be miles away. We weren’t. We were extremely close. Close enough to watch all the ceremonial traditions of a presidential inauguration.
Close enough to hear the strains of Yo-Yo Ma’s cello, close enough to listen to melancholic tones of violinist Itzhak Perlman and close enough to spot the grey turrets of Aretha Franklin’s hat as she sang My Country, ’Tis Of Thee.
We heard the continuous boos as former president after former president were announced by the crowd.
Five minutes later than scheduled, Barack Obama arrived with his wife Michelle and his daughters Sasha and Malia. Again, I could hear the millions of people behind me celebrating.
And with the simple act of placing his hand on the Bible and uttering a few words, he was sworn in. Soon his face appeared just visible behind bullet proof security screens and he started to speak.
This was it. I was in the middle of history. I only remember snaps shots and sound bites of what he said.
My life companion, educated in American politics and history, wrote that it had not the sweeping verse of John F Kennedy – whose portrait hangs in my in-laws house in Donegal’s Gaeltacht.
But Obama's words, his melodic style of speaking, were secondary to the visual image before us being beamed across the world.
Young, eloquent, educated and classy – Barack Obama was just what America needed. When he spoke, the millions of behind me roared again.
It was spine-tingling. But the world has changed since then. I couldn't watch TV coverage of Donald Trump being inaugurated.
Even his name sticks in my throat. And I’m not even American, so his actions may or may not ever impact on my life.
I went to bed in Belfast at 5.50am on November 9, 2016, as it was looking certain that Trump would become the next president.
I’d be swapping emails all night with my Bostonian friend who’d been with me that night in Georgetown, toasting Barack Obama.
We always jokingly swap messages across the pond when a mishap happens which makes the American news. Her line is: “I apologise on behalf of my nation.”
She wrote that line again in the early hours when she both realised that no glass ceiling would be smashed and we would not be waking up to see a woman as leader of the free world.
That day in 2009, after we watched Obama being sworn it, we walked with the crowds, looking for the designated place to file our copy back to Belfast.
Then a helicopter passed overhead. It was carrying George W Bush. Several people stopped in their tracks and give it a two-fingered salute.
Then he was perceived as the worst thing to happen to the American presidency.
Who knows what the next four years, or even the next few days, will bring? Obama said in his final press briefing: “I think we're going to be okay.”
Obama swept to power all the years ago with a strong message of hope.
And his parting words are trying to encourage America and the rest of us need to have hope.
Because how can we face the future of a president Trump without it?
