She’s Seen It All

Suffragette Susan B. Anthony’s Headstone covered with women’s “I voted” stickers.

“In the midst of the chaos
When the wind is howling I hear
The ancient song
Of the ones who went before
And know that peace will come.”
~Susan Stauter

I woke up this morning and opened my eyes. Peace.
That is until my neurons started firing, thoughts flooding in, reminding me what day it is.

Election day here in the U.S.

No peace today, right?

I voted early so I have plenty of time to go bite my nails down to the nub, watch the election results with my eighty-year-old mom.

Just that I can do that makes today a victory in my book.

As far back as I can remember my mom has followed politics. More than followed.  If you look up the phrase “political junkie” online my mom’s picture will pop up. She could give Tom Brokaw a run for his money. Seriously. She has lived and breathed every aspect of this game called politics going all the way back to waiting breathlessly as a young girl for election results to be announced on the radio. A child of the thirties, she was among the first generation of women born with the right to vote.

That was huge and she taught me never to take that lightly. The common thread throughout my life has been this single phrase: This is history, Janet.

I’d like to say I’ve always shared her passion and respect for politics but I have to admit there have been many elections through the years where I just didn’t give a shit. When Reagan ran against Mondale I was in my twenties. They were two boring old white guys and I can say in all honesty—I gave less than a shit.

Not my mom.

There have been decades where I would have to change the subject immediately (usually to football, another passion of hers), so as not to get caught in a political discussion because let me tell you—she will not suffer the fool who can’t name the candidates, their platform, and where they stand in the polls.

Eight years ago I got lured back in by Obama. I cared about hope and change. So did my mom. I hadn’t seen her that fired up for a candidate since Bobby Kennedy all the way back in 1968.

God, she loved Bobby Kennedy; well, all the Kennedy’s really. Camelot had been the real deal to her. Jack and Jackie were just like her (except for the rich and movie star gorgeous part) and their children were even the same age as hers!
Then, when it ended so tragically, we all sat in front of our little black and white TV for three days so my mom could try to process her grief and mourn with the rest of the country. Watch this. This is history, Janet, she said to someone too young to understand fully what she was seeing.

She wanted Bobby in the White House so badly that when he won the Primary in our state of California that warm June night in 1968 she went to bed jubilant, only to be woken up early the next morning by my dad. “Bobby Kennedy was shot last night. He’s dead.”

God. What a brave man, my dad. I can’t imagine giving her that news.

By the time my ten-year old self stumbled out of bed that morning, my thirty-year-old, optimistic, resident of Camelot, political junkie of a mom had been transformed into a somber, red-eyed cynic. “This country has gone to hell.” she sobbed. Pay attention, this is history, Janet.  This time I understood. But something in her had changed. She stayed in the game but the light went out of her eyes where politics was concerned.

And yet she still had her opinions.

She thought the whole Nixon/Watergate thing was deplorable (sorry Hillary, she said it first.)

She liked Clinton, she just couldn’t stomach his self-sabatoge—and she wished he’d just keep his dick in his pants.

She could hardly believe the shenanigans involved with the hanging chads, Supreme Court decision of 2000.

And don’t get her started on Bush. Or Cheney. “These two are ridiculous (words I can’t write here). Someone needs to reign them in. For godsakes, where are their wives?”

But my mom was ecstatic when Obama won in 2008. The fire was back. “ I can’t believe we have a black man in office. I never thought I’d see that.” she kept repeating as we both cried our way through his acceptance speech in Grant Park with his gorgeous, beaming wife and two young daughters by his side.  “I hope nothing bad happens to him”, she worried.

Pay attention. This is history, Janet.

“But I called it, remember?” she reminded me proudly, like she’d picked the winning horse while he was still a foal. “When he spoke at the Democratic Convention back in 2004? Remember? I said he could be President some day!”

I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning but I do remember her saying that. A lot.

So.. this election. This election has been…unprecedented. I think that’s the word that’s been used most often these past eighteen months. Can you believe that? This spectacle has been going on for almost 600 days!

But my mom will scoff if I throw that word around lightly. “What this guy is spewing is unprecedented!” I’ll lament into the phone. I can hear her take a deep breath, her political science professor of a brain quickly gathering the facts.

“That’s not true.” She reminds me. “People need to remember George Wallace. He ran for president in 1964, 1972, and 1976, as a Democratic if you can believe that!” she spits out the word Democrat like a nasty word. “And in 1968 as an Independent. Oh, 1968. The Vietnam war. The assassinations of Bobby and Martin. The Chicago seven. They had riots that year at the Democratic Convention.”

They say if you can remember the sixties—you weren’t there.  Oh, she was there and she remembers EVERYTHING.

“George Wallace was a bigot, and a segregationist, populist who used the Ku Klux Clan as his security. He was a man filled with anger and hate, so this guys not the first…but at least our party had the good sense not to nominate him.”

So, things have been just as bad… or worse. I should have paid more attention to history.

So, yeah. I’ll be watching the results with that woman. The woman who reminded me a while back that what was unprecedented was having the first female nominee of a major political party and potentially the first woman President of the United States.

History is being made and its gotten completely overshadowed.

But not in her eyes. I really hope and pray I get to see the glass ceiling shatter tonight, sitting with my mom the life-long political wonk as she reassures me that she’s seen it all— assassinations, hate mongering and undecided elections and that in the end—our democracy will endure.

Pay attention, Janet. This is history.

Carry on,
xox

My mom and me sometime during the Reagan administration.