Feel

If anyone had told me earlier than mid-February or so that I'd be rooting for Hillary Clinton today, I would have told him or her to go jump in the lake...

I barely remember anything from the early 90's--I was so wrapped up in my own dramas. On Election Day, 1992, I entered the polling booth and numbly voted for George H.W. Bush's second term. I knew there were a number of spoilers--well, actually, quite a few of them--for Russ Perot. "Oh, no, I can't do that," I remember telling someone. The Clintons were young; energetic. I was not prepared to see a First Lady become so personally involved in public policy. National health care: did I discuss this with my mother? I was more wrapped up in returning to a more grown-up existence in Florida; to meandering up and down the East Coast; traveling to the West Coast, and beyond. November 1996 found me in Upstate New York. By then my mother was sold on Bill Clinton: "He feels," she said. In her own way she was trying to convert me. She lost one of her best friends in the process, at least in this lifetime. I've realized why she'd "turned": she was so very smart herself, yet she did not wear her empathy on her sleeve (unless you really knew her: her adopted family in Cuba; staff and patients at South Florida State Hospital; and a select handful of friends had been the beneficiaries of her emotional largesse...but not necessarily members of her own family, I now realize).

Through Bill, she felt. Believe it or not, she almost convinced me. However, by the time I'd entered the polling station in Ithaca, I had a crisis of conscience...and voted for Bob Dole. Monicagate ensued soon afterward, by which time I was ensconced up the street at Rodman, glued to CNN, and/or reading The Post, for all they were worth...We discussed the issue on the phone. Once again, she tried to intervene: "Mitterand's mistress attended his funeral," she said to me on more than one occasion. As I'd been raised--well, let's just say that now I understand better than ever. In the long run she backtracked a bit: for the sake of the various levels of national shame/pain her adopted country was experiencing? Should I translate this to mean, her shame/pain? Perhaps. Anyway, her current events focus was usually global: she was still keeping an eye on Saddam Hussein. She periodically used to send me news clippings on developments in the Middle East, and elsewhere. Or else--usually--she was focused on me. She passed away just shy of the end of November of 1999; the pre-2000 election jitters were already under way. Was she paying attention before she had the final stroke the first weekend of November? Knowing her, probably. Was I? I was becoming excited about the governor of Texas. However, I was more concerned about Y2K...That's the way I began my return to Miami. There was so much to do. Election Eve 2000 found me in my third home that year--I remember staying up til after 3 a.m.; as well as keeping an eye on the weeks that followed. Hanging chads? I think I had a butterfly ballot. I don't have to tell you who I'd voted for. That's when Hillary became Senator from New York; all I thought at the time was, "How ambitious." She quickly joined Rudy in the aftermath of 9/11. All well and good; and proper. Afghanistan (and how did I remember my little Afghani refugees in Nashville in the late eighties). "Shock and awe": even as I watched, that first day and night, shamelessly glued to the tube, I also thought: "Vietnam." My pre-teen through my early adolescence: had nothing filtered through? Obviously something had...Moving along in Miami by now, I watched both conventions in 2004. As mesmerized as I was by Barack's speech, Kerry couldn't motivate me...and, sure enough, I voted for 43 again. I noted, however, that Colin Powell--whom my mother had admired immeasurably--got out. I'd begun to perk up. It was an interview Byron Pitts had with some soldiers on CBS that resurrected my teenaged memories once and for all. Now what to do? The 2008 race was shaping up. I didn't fully tune back in until I returned to D.C. I was fully back on board by the Iowa Caucus: reading (usually online this time); and watching the tube into the wee hours of the morning. Reading; watching; listening; and...yes, making up my mind: for myself; and by myself. I'm not going to go into a blow by blow at this point, except to say that, by the time I'd heard Ed Rendell and Terry McAuliffe and Kiki McLean and other Clinton surrogates endorse Hillary for the umpteenth time--and I was paying attention to the Obama presentations, too--I began to realize what she stood for, and what it means for me, as a woman: what her nomination could--and would--mean. By then I'd remembered one of my mother's most oft-mentioned stories: about how, when my parents had spent time at the University of Michigan during World War II, one of the things she'd noticed was that women worked in the laboratories, awaiting their turn to be able to enroll in the medical school. There were quotas...(as opposed to the relative self-attrition that seemed to be more the norm in Europe). And how could I forget that one of her aunts had been the third woman doctor in Hungary? Ilonka hadn't practiced, for she'd married a wealthy man, but she'd made it. Pioneers: my great-aunt; my mother; and now, you. All it took was for me to make this connection, between the woman who wanted to feel; and the wife of the man who feels--who does, herself, feel. You didn't just make dents in the ceiling, Hillary: you broke through. On this, the 88th anniversary of a woman's right to vote in this country you and my mother love so much (and she did), I salute you!

For Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ana Raab Marrero, and Rosario Camacho de Golderos