Finally, it was time to vote for a woman

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February 8, 2008

BY SHANNON REED The Tribune-Democrat Fri Feb 08, 2008, 01:43 PM EST

All over the country on Tuesday, women began weeping at the polls. I know. I was one of them.

At 6:15, the very first voter in my precinct, I teared up behind the thick plastic curtains.

Throughout the day, I heard from my women friends and co-workers a story similar to what I had already experienced: We took 15 minutes out of a busy day to stand in line at our polling places, our minds elsewhere – on the job, on the kids, on the budget, on the dry cleaning – until it was time to slip into the booth and start clicking off names.

Looking at the choices, we began, by rote, to reach up toward the candidate we liked the most, or respected most deeply, or felt was the most competent, or had settled on as the lesser of two evils.

And then, our hands stretched out, we froze. We realized, in a moment of quiet joy – we could vote for a woman.

Someone like us. A woman as equally derided as loved, yes. A woman full of flaws and virtues, yes. A woman who, like so many of her generation, seems to have worked harder than any man to arrive where she is.

A woman who, as we would see in the news later, made a questionable wardrobe choice that day. A woman who probably longed to talk to her husband and daughter as she spent the day with strangers.

A woman who seems to believe that we can do better, for ourselves and for each other. An imperfect woman, just like us. A woman.

And so, we wept – one tear wiped briskly away, or floods shed, not so dissimilar to how she had cried herself, just a few weeks ago. And we had the thought, so rare in America these long, difficult days, of patriotism, thinking: Look how far we’ve come.

And, perhaps, before we left the voting booth, we looked up at our second choice, a man of charisma and grace, of grand ideas and of mixed race. A man whom we expect to hear from again and again.

We thought about what a fine second choice he was, and how we might like to vote for him. But we hadn’t. We had voted for a woman.

And then we snapped open our cell phones, dug out our car keys and bus passes, quieted the baby, shifted the coffee to a free hand, opened the file folder, thought about what to make for dinner – and headed out into the country we love.

A native of Geistown, Shannon Reed now lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., and is a teacher, playwright and activist.

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Finally, it was time to vote for a woman

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