Margotlog: Hillary and My Foremothers

Margotlog: Hillary and My Foremothers

Driving away from Terminal 2 at the Minneapolis airport early this morning, I passed the acres of white crosses that represent Minnesota's military dead. Out of the blue came a sudden memory of my father's first cousin Eleanora, who lived virtually her entire adult life after her husband Dick was killed in the Pacific just before the end of World War II. She was only twenty-one. For years and years afterwards, she and her sister Sadie worked in Washington, D.C.--Eleanora as a nurse for various government agencies, and Sadie in the Office of the President. When I was old enough to visit on my own, they became my extended family, hosting me as a Baltimore college student, inviting me for years afterwards to various Washington apartments and eventually to their assisted living residence in Dover, Delaware. They were the most joyful women, and some of the most accomplished, I have ever known.

My own mother was quite accomplished in her own right--she liked to brag about being a librarian in Pittsburgh for a decade, "BB," before babies. Later, when my sister and I could fend for ourselves after school, she went back to library work, first at a nearby highschool, then across the roller-coaster Cooper River Bridge that linked our suburban Mount Pleasant home to Charleston, South Carolina. She took the bus because she never really learned to drive. Later when my parents moved across the other of Charleston's two rivers, she often got a ride from my father, since her commute coincided with his teaching at The Citadel. I have learned to love my mother, to appreciate the subtleties of her nordic intensity. But that affection came when she, as Emily Dickinson wrote of her own mother, depended on us, not before.

Last night as I listened to Hillary Clinton accept the Democratic Party's nomination for President, I heard echoes of my foremothers. Hillary talked about her mother's impoverished childhood, and the hand-outs of food given her mother as a child. She talked about her father's printng business and how hard he worked to make enough to support a family. My own mother's father did quite well--first as a postmaster in their small North Dakota town, then marrying the daughter of a furniture store owner and eventually acquiring the store, and finally during the Depression buying up farms for unpaid back taxes. In many ways, my hard-working North Dakota grandfather lived the American Dream--he worked hard and was eminently successful, finally becoming the town's s mayor, "raising the roof" on the cottage and expanding it until the house I knew as a girl awed me with stained-glass windows, burnished staircase, and columned rooms.

Yet there were undercurrents--her father beat the much younger, Swedish immigrant teacher who became his second wife. Perhaps he did not beat her at the beginning when she was giving birth to their four children, but afterwards after the children had grown and moved away. She must have been depressed and wept for hours. This is the undercurrent that (I suspect) created the harshness that frightened me in my own mother, along with her determination to get things done, no matter what the consequences. Not that she broke any laws, but she ignored some unspoken contracts of civility and kindness. She also married a charming, but volatile man who needed "managing." This meant that the tension between my parents revolved around power and respect--my mother could be snide and dictatorial. I understand now why he often yelled his resentment at her.

When we elect a president, we enter into their histories and psyches. Some grow remarkably in office, rising to challenges with a fairness and strength that awe us far beyond what we expected. Others seem to shrink, decay, go bad. The trick, I think, is to listen for several things--an awareness that for those in need, government policy can give them a leg up and that it is up to a president--Eisenhower, Johnson, Obama--to craft initiative and support policy that make sure chidlren have enough to eat so they can concentrate in school, adults have jobs that help them reach their potential, and the rights to organize and vote are protected. These are the bedrock on which this country must rely if our "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." is to remain a democracy. 

As Tolstoy writes in the opening of Anna Karenina, "All happy families are alike; all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way." Democracy depends on happiness for the greatest number of people to the widest extent possible. Listening to Hillary Clinton's acceptance speech a few nights ago, I heard her personal story give meaning to these national goals. She also has amended and reframed some earlier ideas and adopted new ones. Such ability to bring new emphasis and initiative into play strikes me as crucial if a leader is to grow in response to changing challenges. Though she is no more perfect than any of us, I was struck by her range of care and precision of planning. Struck by how she honored her family's struggle,and dedicated herself not to hate or divisiveness, but to building individuals, families, communities and country stronger, with honor toward all and rancor toward none. This sounds like Lincoln, surely a great model for any pulic servant. But that she spoke in a woman's voice, from a woman's perspective still gives me the chills. It is time we elevanted one of our most dedicated public servants to our highest office. It is time we had a woman as resilient, capable, informed, and inspiriing as Hillary Clinton for president.