Stand Together

Damp as a wet dog’s nose when my alarm went off at 5 yesterday and I thought I’d never be able to get out of that bed. But  I had to be in the city by 7 so off I went in the rain and even my old fedora couldn’t stop my hair from looking like this. (It’s funny: you think you look OK  right up until someone two decades younger grabs your arm and says  “Oh look at you in your hat! how CUTE is that!" and boom you’re back to feeling like a circus monkey all over again just like you did when you were 12.)Still, I had a swell time: I learned about an institution so great it will need more than a newspaper column and a few blog posts to tell about. I also looked up at  the ridiculously high ceilings of the Harvard Club that kind of make you want to rally the peasants and lead a torchlight mob to the palace – until  you remember how many young people with nothing have found a place there over the years.I didn’t find a place there. I didn't find a place at any of the Ivy League schools because when I was coming up they didn’t take my kind at the Ivies. I was a girl, and back then  girls were raised to act as ornaments to their husband’s careers and tenders of the next generation of little male rulers. I went instead to  a women’s college called Smith which has been turning out sharp and competent leaders since the 1870s and I thank God every day that they found me and gave me that scholarship that got me through,along with the my part-time job and the $25 a month my mom scraped up to send me.One of the people given an award at yesterday’s breakfast was Ayanna Pressley, the first woman of color to serve as one of the Boston’s City Council's Councilors-at-Large. She told us how some older guru-pol told her she'd sure-enough  never win an election on a platform of saving the girls but that was her platform and win she did because, as she says, "girls become women and women are the backbone of our families our neighborhoods and our communities."Rain or no rain it was a good day to take my little monkey-self to hear a message like that.When I got back to my house I sat outside in the car for a whole hour, looking at that front-yard tree so bare now just 24 hours after its big moment. And I remembered what Eleanor Roosevelt said about how no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. And I thought "Wear the hat you like when you want to wear it, T!" And who cares what kind of creature you are as long as you're strong and kind and you stand with your fellow creatures in good times and bad.