My prayers go out to Barack Obama and his grandmother with the thought that even as it lets you learn to fly, life also brings you back to earth.  Obama's strength in leaving the campaign to be with his grandmother is admirable and only speaks more of the qualities of the man.  If you can, vote early for Obama and join me in hoping that his grandmother lives to see him elected - and inaugurated as - president.

Barack Obama arrives in Hawaii to visit ill grandmother

Democratic presidential hopeful breaks from campaign to spend time with woman who raised him through teenage years

• Dan Glaister in Honolulu
• guardian.co.uk, 
• Friday October 24 2008 08.07 BST
• Article history

Barack Obama arrives in Hawaii to visit his ailing grandmother. Photograph: Hugh Gentry/Reuters

The Democratic presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, touched down in Honolulu today to visit his sick grandmother.

He took what is expected to be a 24-hour break from hiscampaign to spend time with the woman who raised him in Hawaii for most of his teenage years.

Madelyn Dunham, 85, his maternal grandmother, suffers from osteoporosis and is thought to have broken her hip in a recent fall. Obama is chastened by the memory of not being at his mother's side when she died in Hawaii of ovarian cancer at the age of 52.

"My grandmother's the last one left," he told an interviewer earlier this week. "She has really been the rock of the family, the foundation of the family ... I want to make sure that I don't make the same mistake twice."

"O Force One", as his campaign plane is known, landed shortly after 7.15pm (0600 BST), its fuselage emblazoned with the original campaign slogan "Change we can believe in". That slogan has since been replaced with the more tangible "Change we need".

Obama went straight to his grandmother's small apartment in central Honolulu, where a small crowd of 50 onlookers had gathered. He was expected to spend the day with her at the 10th floor apartment where he lived from the age of 10 until he left for college in Los Angeles. Obama's half-sister has been living with their grandmother in recent years to look after her.

A strong-willed woman described by friends as "bird-like", Dunham was the main breadwinner during Obama's childhood. She rose from a secretarial job at the Bank of Hawaii to become one of its vice-presidents. Her earnings, and the sacrifices made by her and her husband, Stanley, helped to pay for Obama's education at one of the most prestigious private schools in the country.

Obama has drawn on his grandmother's life story during the campaign. In one advertisement in which she appeared, he noted that she had "taught me values straight from the Kansas heartland", including "accountability and self-reliance. Love of country. Working hard without making excuses. Treating your neighbour as you'd like to be treated."

Accepting the Democratic nomination in August in Denver, Obama paid tribute to Dunham, who he calls Toot, short for a Hawaiian term for grandmother, "tutu".

"She's the one who taught me about hard work," he said. "She's the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life. She poured everything she had into me."

But Dunham did not necessarily share her grandson's political views. She is thought to have been a Republican voter in the past. This year, however, she took advantage of early voting to cast her vote in the presidential election.

Obama was expected to leave his native Hawaii this evening and resume campaigning in Nevada on Saturday.