Taking a Moment

After 38 years of waiting, wishing and imagining a woman leading our country -- after a four-year degree from a bona fide feminist institution -- after the slow-growing hope and satisfaction of having two home states represented by two female senators (each!) -- after watching our homeland crumble for seven years under arrogant, disdainful, stolen "leadership" -- I stood at the voting booth yesterday in the auditorium of our local elementary school and felt the moment in my bones.

I stared at her name. I was surprised to feel my skin prickle and my eyes fill with tears. My throat squeezed inside. I inhaled once short and quick, then once long and slow.

I thought, "Am I really about to do this?"

Then, still staring at her name, I picked up the pen, whispered, "I'm sorry" under my breath, and voted for Barack Obama.

***

I remember casting my first-ever vote for Bill Clinton behind a curtain at Government Center in Boston, Massachusetts in 1992 -- but not the absentee ballot I sent from Morocco affirming my decision four years later. I remember standing in line for an hour and a half outside a small house just this side of the freeway in a mixed-race, low-income neighborhood in Pasadena, California to vote for Al Gore in 2000 -- the longest I've ever had to wait to vote. But I don't recall the hopeless, hapless mark I made for John Kerry four years later, when the world had turned upside-down.

Although I almost always vote, even in the most obscure municipal elections, I don't recollect the actual moment of voting in any of the four primary elections in which I must certainly have taken part.

But I will never forget that moment this year.

In fact, I wondered intermittently throughout the day whether, 40 years from now, I might regret my vote. Not because of anything a President Obama might do but, instead, because if we end up with another President Clinton, I would not have participated in that historic moment. I would not be able to tell my granddaughters and grandsons, "Yes, I helped a mother become the leader of our country."

***

The Dragon and I did go to the polls on the way home from daycare last night. We stood at the door and I pointed at the people getting their paper, slipping it into the machines, marking it with a pen, returning it to the box.

"They're writing on the paper who they like best," I said. "They're telling the people who they want to be our leader." He watched intently for a few minutes.

"Do you want to vote when we get home?" I asked. He nodded vigorously.

When we arrived home, I printed out pictures of all the major candidates for him: Clinton and Obama on one sheet, the four Republicans on the other. I told him to choose the one he liked best from each sheet.

He looked at the Republicans first and just shook his head. "No," he said.

"Which one do you like best?" I asked, pointing at each one in turn. "Him, or him, or him, or him?"

"I don't like them," he insisted.

"What if one of them was going to be your teacher?" I said.

"No."

"Or your grandpa?"

"Grandpa?" he said.

"Just to pretend," I assured him. "Which one looks like a good grandpa?"

He pointed tentatively to John McCain.

Then I gave him his Democratic ballot. Before I could even set it on the table, he pointed to Hillary Clinton. "That one," he declared.

"Are you sure?" I said.

"Yes. That one." He poked at her face again. "The mama."

"Oh," I said, pointing to Obama. "Daddy and I like him."

"No," he said emphatically, his finger again on Hillary's face. "Her."

We drew dolphins on the back of his ballots as we watched the returns from all across the country. I printed off more ballots for him and his responses were always the same: No on the Republicans; Hillary over Barack.

Just before bedtime, Clinton climbed the stairs to the podium in New York. When the Dragon heard the cheering, he looked up at the TV and pointed.

"There's the mama!" he shouted, his eyes sparkling. "Yaaaayyyy!" He stood up and clapped.

Hillary raised her arms to the crowd, and the cheering subsided. The Dragon and I sat absorbed, his bedtime ticking past.

"Thank you," she said. "Thank you."

She cocked her head, the way she does. "You know, tonight we are hearing the voices of people across America -- people of all ages -- of all colors -- all faiths -- and all walks of life.

"People on the day shift -- the night shift -- the late shift with the crying baby."

And for the second time that day, my throat tightened and my eyes filled with tears. I didn't hear anything else she said.

She gets me, I thought.

For the first time in memory, I sat and listened to a politician say something about my life that truly reflected my life: not just my beliefs about health care or the economy or the war -- not something about a frustration I have with a doctor or a school or an employer -- not something about who I wish I could be -- but something that goes to the core of who I am, right now, in every moment.

This is someone who has carried a baby in her belly and in her arms, obsessed about its health and safety, awakened with it at three in the morning to nourish it and comfort it. She has sacrificed physical independence and restorative sleep -- two of our most elemental human needs -- in order to build and sustain another person. She knows what it is not just to lead, to be powerful and victorious and proud and idealistic -- but also what it is to be led, to be humble and humbled and scared, to follow not just her ideals but also her instincts, her intuition, her obligation.

I don't mean to imply that men don't do many of these things, too. But I was struck, last night, by that one turn of phrase, "the late shift with the crying baby," that she intimately knows about those most difficult moments of my life because she has experienced them, too. And I was struck by how seldom the deepest threads of our lives, the almost-imperceptible string of moments that make up our days and our nights -- whoever we are in life -- gets woven into the fabric of political speech.

***

Had the world not gone the way it did in the last seven years -- oh, not even the world, just the country, or perhaps simply the Presidency itself -- I would not have hesitated to vote for the first-ever woman candidate with a viable shot at the office.

But this time around, the mess we're in trumps my longstanding dreams. My heart hurts with the political gash that's ruptured our country, and with its bloodier, messier reflection that we've provoked in Iraq. I think, more than any single traditional "issue," that this country is hemorrhaging with vitriol and mistrust. It's a country that desperately needs healing.

As much as her words made me feel understood as I wake up with a child at three in the morning, mumbling soothing words while exhaustion atrophies my energy, I am not at all confident that the people who hate Hillary can let go of their hatred long enough to allow her to campaign fairly and, were she the victor, to then lead the country with strength. Without laying blame at her feet, I can't shake the sense that she is too entwined not in the policies or the structures of the past but simply in its abject meanness.

I am very tired from sleepless nights, yes. But I am even more exhausted and frightened by the seemingly endless partisan rancor. I am quite afraid that, in order to win, Hillary would need to mudsling as well: There would be no change in our country's political culture, which is where change is needed most of all. I don't know anyone personally who would stand up in front of a crowd and disparage their neighbors, who would dig into their friends' pasts to discredit them, who would spend more time on the bickering than on restoring peace, health and hope to the world. I cannot withstand another year, or four years, or eight years, of meanness and arrogance while the earth keeps on shattering.

Right now I -- we -- need a healer at the helm. Obama doesn't seem, to me, to engender the vitriol that Hillary does. He appears to listen, to weigh the complexity of arguments, to get nuance, be able to hold opposing viewpoints and unbraid them, in order to understand them, in order to form opinions with foundation and vision -- and flexibility. God, please let our next President be someone with flexibility. He seems, perhaps because he has such a short history in the nation's Capitol, to transcend the destructive factionalizing that's now a Washington tradition. He seems like a healer to me, at a time when we need one more than anything.

So, with a little pang but a lot more hope, I'll continue to support Obama -- and perhaps help history in an equally important way. Voting for the first Black man to make it this far: It's not as personal to me as a vote for another mother, but I'm proud and excited and humbled to do it nonetheless.

***

And yet.

The woman and the mother and the feminist in me quietly continue to circle their own tired wagons -- clinging to a secret bit of hope that I still get the chance to support her victory in November.