I Miss Nana

Tomorrow's the big day. We vote and decide whether we'll go along more or less in the same way or go hurtling backwards 40-50 years. I'm really sick of being scared at every election. These neocons do scare the hell outta me, because they feel they have some sort of religious crusade. This time their crusade may not involve cannibalism or raping, killing and torturing those who don't "believe" as they do along the way. I hope they don't get the chance so we can see whether it does or not. So far, we've been doing a good job of raping, killing and torturing without a religious zeal to fuel it.

Certainly I don't want to see anyone in office who'd dictate a woman's reproductive rights. Certainly I don't want to see someone in office who puts their personal religious beliefs before anyone else's. Certainly I don't want to see anyone in office who wants to keep or establish inequality among We the People. But politics has become an arena of those who have bad ideas and those who make those ideas worse. Has it always been this way? I wish I could talk to my Nana right now. Yes, it's gotten to the point that I want my Nana.

Nana was a Republican and a Christian. She was also one of those women who, in the 1920s, sat on a park bench with another woman who let a glimpse of stocking reveal that they were who you were safe to approach if you needed an abortion. She and the other woman would get up and walk away, and the woman in need would follow them to the sidewalk where they'd address her and then escort her to a relatively safe place for her abortion to be done. I don't want to go back to those days.

Nana wasn't wealthy or a big philanthropist but she campaigned for assistance to the poor. During the Depression she fed anyone who showed up at her door. On her gatepost was the hobo sign for "kindly woman". She believed that everyone should be helped when they need it. Any kind of assistance they needed. And that you should be ashamed of yourself for refusing or questioning their need. Because she was a Christian.

Nana thought everyone was equal on the Earth. That it was wrong to exclude people from any right or privilege. She'd been a Suffragette. She drove an automobile in 1919 and was a decorated NYPD Captain in 1923. She was active in the Brooklyn Republican Party and the papers called her "Republican Battleaxe", which she thought hilarious. It was at her table that I heard, "I may not agree with what you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." and "Well, we'll agree to disagree."- that said with a chuckle. She wasn't condescending, she didn't think she was better than anyone else. She didn't dismiss people as "nonbelievers" or arrogantly think her way was the only way.
She just had principles and she lived them.

I miss Nana on the eve of this election.