I got to the el station to head downtown to join the rally and march before 9:00 AM. It was easy to spot others with the same destination.

Quite a few wore pink knit “pussy” hats. Many of them carried signs.

I joked with a few ladies while we waited for the next train.

“I couldn’t bear to watch the TV during the inauguration yesterday,” I confessed. “I had root canal done.”

The information was true enough. I spent a good part of the previous morning with an endodontic specialist. The implication in my statement, though, was that I would rather have painful dental work than see the man I’ve come to refer to as the NIC (Narcissist In Chief) put his hand on Lincoln’s bible and take the oath of office.

The train car was filled to capacity within two stops of where I got on, and I am only 3 stops form the end of the line. There were young women and old hippies, gangs of gal pals and feminists of all sexes. Quite a few families made a special outing out of the occasion.

The crowds on the street were huge.   After I got home later in the day, I Googled crowd estimates. Maybe 250,000 showed up for the Women’s March in Chicago on an unseasonably warm January afternoon.

Through my post-march web surfing, I took note that there were over 150 marches around the world. People in London, Paris, Madrid, Sydney, New Delhi, and Manila (among other locations) marched in solidarity.

Led by the idea that women’s rights are synonymous with human rights, other causes seemed to align perfectly. Everything comes down to mutual respect and kindness, doesn’t it?

Along with throngs of people disembarking from trains, buses and cars, I was guided to a bridge (on Van Buren or Balbo) because there was no more room at the publicized staging area. Here, we waited until the foot traffic (the marchers) started moving.

We couldn’t hear any of the speeches from where we were…but we smiled at each other. We were glad we came.

After 90 minutes of watching the crowd expand like lungs filling up with fresh air, we started moving along a planned route. The marching route was supposed to end with a rally at the federal plaza, but this had to be canceled.  The crowd was too large to assemble there.

Very deliberately and peaceably we started to go west where we made a right turn at Wabash Avenue. A loud rhythmic chant seemed to rise up spontaneously, not amplified but very strong.

NO HATE. NO FEAR. EVERYONE IS WELCOME HERE. As we marched north, it was hard not to notice Trump Tower in the distance.

Under the shadow of the el train, just beginning to realize how large a group we were, we broke into THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE. Our voices drowned out the sound of trains rumbling overhead.

Everyone had their cellphones out to snap pictures of the signs. We all wanted to remember this personally inspiring and historic day.

Looking at all the signs felt like getting to know everyone as individuals.

Some signs were philosophical, proclaiming WOMEN’S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS and QUALITY MEN WANT EQUALITY FOR WOMEN, or THE FUTURE IS FEMALE.

Other signs reflected the intergenerational aspect of the experience. Young girls, who probably hadn’t yet mastered large-scale printing, held up hand-drawn pictures of roaring grizzly bears, in homage to Helen Reddy’s classic song, “I Am Woman. Hear me Roar.”

I came across a ten-year old boy, carrying a dark sign, lettered in gold marker. I AM MARCHING FOR MY MOTHER. (MY BABY SITTER, I’M NOT TOO CRAZY ABOUT).

Some slogans were tongue in cheek and political. Riffing off the THANKS OBAMA video which went viral showing Obama unable to dunk a large cookie in a narrow glass of milk, a visual metaphor for how he was often blamed for anything that was wrong, even things out of his scope, I saw a THANKS PUTIN sign.

Eerily representing the state of news reporting, referring to the size of the crowd, another sign read FOX NEWS WILL LIE ABOUT THIS.

Many signs expressed a more personal pain. One read WHY DON’T MORE RAPE VICTIMS REPORT THEIR EXPERIENCE? 20 DID AND THE MAN ACCUSED BECAME PRESIDENT.

Whether on the ground marching alongside of each other or from above – We were beautiful!

Making a quick stop at Walgreens to buy poster board and a Sharpie to express yourself before meeting up with 250,000 other souls who want to show up in the world is no small thing.