mothers on the verge

So, now with the Democratic convention underway, we're starting that deeply American tradition called the Presidential election. How much do I hate this time? I'd rather watch pre-season football. From 1997. No, not anti-American. Just have a really hard time stomaching one bad speech after another meant to rile what I like to believe are thoughtful, independent-thinking people into a herd mentality. The Rabbit understands that something is going on about voting. She understands that mommy and daddy have not exactly agreed in recent months about something, but that things seem to be calming down. But now, as The Prince believes he's won the battle, he is trying to turn The Rabbit into his own little cheerleader. Last night, after prompting her for a bit with some chanting and so forth, (while mama read quietly in the other room) I heard him ask her the following: The Prince: "So, WHO are we going to vote for honey?" A pause. The Rabbit: "I'm going to vote...

“I don’t like the sound of her voice.” A friend, a woman in her 60s, says this to me. “I would vote for her if she HAD divorced her husband,” says another friend. I’m reading for the first time The Golden Notebook, a gift from my mother this Christmas (as it usually is). On page eight of the introduction, Doris Lessing writes of the Women’s Movement, and that while it's gaining traction: “All kinds of people previously hostile or indifferent say: “I support their aims but I don’t like their shrill voices and their nasty ill-mannered ways.” She writes this in June 1971. Thirty-seven years ago. "I don’t like the sound of her voice." A newscaster refers to a young woman as a streetwalker. “Chelsea’s sort of being pimped out in some weird way.” She’s “likeable enough,” says the man who can’t be bothered to look up from his podium to address her in the eye. Her hair is awful. Her clothes? Anna Wintour suggests an entire wardrobe change in Vogue. She’s the wife of the wrong man...