I have long loved summer, it’s long long days, the clear blue skies, vacations, and mountain views. 2012 was the summer of surgeries, I had three of them, each spaced two weeks apart. I remember watching the Olympic games from my hospital room on the day after my mastectomy. I spent a lot of that sunny Seattle summer scared and indoors. Since that time, summers have been savored the best that I can. I spend a lot of time outdoors and in nature. I take photos of the beauty around me.
This summer, I’ve been doing a lot of canning. I’ve been preserving the bounty of stone fruits in jams and salsa not to mention our wonderful berries and rhubarb. It reminds me of canning peaches and tomatoes with my mom, when I was a girl. There was so much in the garden, so much in the orchards. It was full and sweet and delicious. Canning is not the same as fresh but in the dark days of winter, it provides a bright taste of summer and the hopes of days of longer sunlight up ahead.
Women, traditionally, are the savers of these normal but parts of life. The save food, remember birthdays, keep photo albums of family vacations, and write milestones, the first steps and first words in baby books. Women preserve history of these day to day memories, the events that are not rare, but to be celebrated and appreciated. These are not events recorded in history books.
The summer of 2016 has brought a new event, one that will be preserved in history books. Yesterday, Hillary Rodham Clinton, was the first woman nominated for the presidency of the United States by a major political party. This is more than a big deal. It is something I did not expect to happen in my lifetime.
Like many major societal changes, the good news has been somewhat offset by negative, qualifying, or discounting remarks. I have seen so many women obviously moved by this historical event include a qualification or apology. “Well, I don’t agree with everything Hillary’s done or said,” or “Hey, I still like Bernie Sanders even if I like Hillary.” I have also seen women admonished for their enthusiasm on social media with cautions of, “Well you know that you shouldn’t just vote for her because she’s a woman. You need to vote for the best candidate.”
As if the women of America would be sent into hysteria and forget how to vote responsibly, something we have been doing as a group, since given the right to vote in the U.S. in 1920. And then there are the other objections, the blemishes, the “good but’s”, and just plain old unadulterated misogyny.
But for now, I am working to preserve, the best and sweetest bits of the summer of 2016, and I am savoring them indeed.
My Eyes Are Up Here 