My mother wore a Hillary hat.
This was a long time ago.
One day, also a long time ago, I passed Hillary on the street in New York — it might have been Madison Avenue, but I'm not sure — and she said, "Hi, how are you?"
Frankly, I wasn't as sure about Hillary Clinton as I am now, but my mother always loved Hillary. I can see her like it was yesterday walking into our New York apartment in that hat.
She was also certain about a lot of other things that came true.
For example, I wasn't going to watch the 2004 Democratic National Convention, but my mother said I should because the young state senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, would be president some day. I went ahead and watched it.
When I used to drive along dark Route 2 more than an hour and a half from my home in South Hadley, Mass., to review plays at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, she said to get a new thing called a car phone. I said, "Who uses a phone in the car?" But I relented and got this boxy thing that ran on the car's battery.
She also said to get a suitcase with wheels. I said, "Who does that?" Now, of course, everyone does.
She died in 2006 and missed all of the excitement that is happening now.
But as I was texting with my high school friends from Friends Seminary last night while we watched Hillary Clinton's historic victory speech, we all said that our mothers were watching together in Heaven. Possibly in the section for the New York mothers who knew best.
1 comment:
As one of Ronni's friends from Friends I wanted to elaborate a little bit on my mom. She was a proud graduate of Wellesley (Hillary's alma mater) and by connection proud of Hillary's accomplishments. My mom was no slouch either. After college she went on to get a PhD from University of Chicago and then an MD from Yale (another Hillary overlap). Interestingly, she ended up at Yale because Harvard just couldn't see its way to admitting woman then. She broke many glass ceilings and would have been so thrilled with yesterday's events and so excited to vote for and witness the installation of the first woman U.S. president. I hope she is watching.
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