September 29, 2018

I could have been a contender. I have been telling myself in that gravelly Rocky voice, even though I have never seen any of the Rocky films.

I could have been a contender to run for public office: I have the speaking voice, the brains, the charm and magnetism (I tell myself). My late husband always said I could talk to a post, and I can. I never thought of the idea before, and I was busy with my life. But now I am too old to run for public office. Certainly my country needs my help, ever since the office of President was taken by a reality TV star. Not that I have been thinking about the office of President, maybe a seat in the House of Delegates of my state? Or the US Senate, especially now they have entered the debacle of approving the President’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court? Watching the proceedings this week and all the old men in the Senate, I think the Senate could use my help. But I am too old.

But I do get around! I was in the Dirksen Senate Building on Thursday, on the first day of the hearings when Dr. Ford was speaking about her sexual assault by Judge Kavanaugh when they were in high school. That day I was in the offices of Senator Ted Cruz, Republican from Texas, where his office floor was filled with young women wearing “Kavanaugh” t-shirts and watching the hearing on the office television. I stepped carefully around the young women, avoiding stepping on their hair, as I delivered my letters to vote against the approval of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. In the hall way I passed other women wearing t-shirts saying “I Believe Survivors of Sexual Assault.”

Later Thursday afternoon I was in the atrium of the Hart Building for the silent vigil which included demonstrators with their mouths taped shut to symbolize how survivors of sexual assault have been silenced. The group moved outside, circling Capitol Hill to the sound of drums and chanting: “No No to Kavanaugh” and down the hill to the Mall.

But I was not there the next day, when one of the women in the halls, a survivor of sexual assault, confronted Senator Flake, Republican of Arizona, and told him she was a survivor. “Look at me,” she insisted.

He was getting on an elevator but she held him with her courage and her honest emotion. And Senator Flake then maneuvered the hearing to hold an FBI investigation before a final vote by the full Senate to confirm Judge Kavanaugh. A glimmer of hope.

My daughter age 47 is feeling some regret that she was not part of that march. I am feeling regret that I am too old to run for public office. But as I told her this evening, we were both there at the Women’s March of 2017. We and her husband and her daughter were all in the mighty number that gave that weight and courage and hope to all the women who decided to run for public office for the first time in this election of November 2018. These women who are running have brains and back ground and speaking ability and empathy, and they can talk to posts with charm…and they are not too old.

Dear sisters, we do not have to be that single voice of persuasion at the elevator, we just have to be the weight that jumps onto the Arc…and bends it toward Justice in the all the ways that we can.