The Writing Mamas Daily Blog
Each day on the Writing Mamas Daily Blog, a different member will write about mothering.If you're a mom then you've said these words, you've made these observations and you've lived these situations - 24/7.
And for that, you are a goddess.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Ode to Hillary
My son pooped on you.
No, not at the polling place or the preacher’s stand. As a six-month-old he pooped on a cotton outfit with your portrait in front, etched in blue. I washed his clothes, but left that pumpkin-colored stain untreated. Call it superstition, but I wanted to leave a spot of imperfection, like the Japanese do with raku pottery. I voted for you in the primaries.
I believed in you, Hillary.
I know you’re the same Hillary who had the audacity of hope to propose a universal health care plan when your hubby first became president. I was a drug dealer then, the legal kind, and I saw how my bosses were legally making all this money off sick and old people. I knew that you could stand up to the hard knocks you get in politics; that you could duke it out with McCain. Not the straight-talking POW, but the John McCain of 2008, the ultimate flip-flopper on Bush’s tax cuts and torture. He’s lost his innocence. Yet, I’d like to think that you’ve kept yours.
People hear you talk in that gravelly Chicago voice and think you’ve been around the block too many times to promise change in this country. Something told me that you still care, that just as you made young Chelsea fax over her homework when you were on the road, you were going to make sure Congress does its arithmetic and, for God’s sake, learn from history once you returned to the Oval Office.
I still want you to keep those campaign promises, Hillary, when you stand up in the Senate chambers. My kid’s health insurance costs will double by the time he turns two. And preschool already costs more than a Stanford education did when Chelsea was in college. I want you to free our public schools from No Child Left Behind, which allows no teacher or underserved child to ever get ahead.
Speaking of behind, I’m afraid that my son pooped on you again. A big sprawling poop the size of Los Angeles. I took out the stain this time. He’ll outgrow the outfit by November, but I don’t think you’re going away. If you don’t wind up being Obama’s running mate, how about a Cabinet post? Or even a seat on the Supreme Court?
That would be justice, American style.
By Li Miao Lovett
Labels: Li Miao Lovett
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