enlarge Doug Jones/Staff Photographer

Jamie Zeitlin, his wife, Paula, and children Jo Jo and Ari are headed to Washington for Barack Obama’s inauguration.

CAPE ELIZABETH — They're going.

They have no tickets to Tuesday's historic inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama.

They have no swanky clothes packed for any of the 10 inaugural balls that will light up Washington that evening.

They have no carved-in-stone itinerary, no rental car and no expectation that they will actually see the nation's first black president beyond one of the 20-plus Jumbotrons scattered up and down the National Mall.

But the Zeitlin family – parents Jamie and Paula and children Jo Jo, 10, and Ari, 7 – do have airline tickets and hotel reservations. And so, come numb fingers or endless port-a-potty lines, they're going.

"It's a very special thing," said young Ari as the family sat around the living room one evening last week.

Special? How so?

"Number one," Ari said, "it's the first black man to get president."

And?

"Number two, it's very special to be one of the 2,000 or 5,000 people who are going."

Forgive the lad's math. When you're in the second grade like Ari, it's hard to tell the difference between a couple of thousand people and the 2 million or more expected to flock this week from Anytown USA to Washington for one communal reason – to stand witness in the chilly January air as history unfolds.

"This is something we've shared as a family," said Paula, a social worker who spent countless hours last year, often with her children in tow, volunteering for the Obama campaign. "We talked about it incessantly. To see it to its end, for them, is great."

"We're not looking at this as the definitive family trip to Washington," said Jamie, a physician, who harbors no illusions about sightseeing and the impending gridlock. "We're looking at it as the definitive trip to the inauguration."

In other words, as they scramble to make this afternoon's inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial and report for duty at a food distribution site during Monday's Day of Service, they'll travel light, keep one another in sight and, above all, remember that who or what they actually see is not as important as where they are.

Unlike thousands now scrambling to a) make their way to the nation's capital and b) find a place to land upon arrival, the Zeitlins have seen this coming since Paula picked up the phone last March and made reservations for Jan. 18-21 at the Georgetown Suites.

"Cancellable reservations," she said. "We said to the kids, 'Whether Hillary or Obama wins, we're going to the inauguration.'"

Then on the morning of Nov. 5, after watching through tears the night before as the Obama family took the stage at Chicago's Grant Park, Paula booked seats on an Air Tran flight from Portland to Baltimore-Washington International.

She cried on Election Night not just at the sight of an African-American family taking its rightful place in the global spotlight. She also cried because all four of Maine's electoral votes had gone to Obama – including the Second District vote that Paula, as a volunteer, had worked hard to secure.

"That was just a remarkable moment," Paula said. "To be able to say we did it. We did it!"

Not taking the kids was never an option. They may be in fourth and second grade, respectively, but Jo Jo and Ari (who on this evening had in his lap a copy of "Good Night, Bush," a take-off on the children's book "Good Night, Moon") are hardly political neophytes.

Back in the fall of 2004, with the presidential battle between U.S. Sen. John Kerry and President Bush raging, the whole Zeitlin family volunteered to drive the anti-Bush "Liar, Liar Pants on Fire Mobile" around Greater Portland.

"So there we were with our 3- and 6-year-olds in car seats, driving around with an effigy of Bush with his pants on fire," Paula recalled.

"We got a lot of interesting reactions," Jamie added.

Unanimous in their distaste...