"Waiting With Eggs In My Chest..."

my firstborn, a fiercely independent Jocelyn, is holding her breath, like all of us are...

The Democratic Convention begins in less than 24 hours and all of us millions and millions of CALM a LA - WALZ fans are thrilled. Still reeling four weeks later, still pinching ourselves, we wake some mornings wondering,

“Wait - did it really happen? Did Joseph Rabinette Biden, Jr. actually decide that he would — as a first-class Patriot and selfless statesman, devoted to saving our democracy — did he really step aside on Sunday, July 21, 2024 — a day that is already marked in HERstory and HIStory.

Was I dreaming that day?

Because as readers of this column know, the night before, at about four in the morning, I woke out of a dead sleep and pulled out the tiny black notebook I keep for just such nocturnal musings. Without thinking, without even looking at the page, I wrote down a haiku (probably because my dear friend Sharon sends me a daily Haiku) and they are kind of infectious, if you are a writer and you start in writing Haikus what happens is that you start to write haikus about absolutely everything.

On that very early morning I opened the little black book and in red pen I wrote across two pages:

CALM a LA Harris

maybe our next President

Blood, bullets may fly

I fiddled with the last line:

Blood, bullets, might fly

and then

Please God, no blood fly

and just

BALLOTS not BULLETS!

and on and on through the next two pages. Then I wrote down the title,

“Harris Haiku,” and drew a heart around it. By then I was really tired, yawning, so I went back to sleep. And I didn’t think much about it until just after Rich and I finished brunch the next day, SUNDAY JULY 21st. I said to my husband, political activist Richard Kirsch, “hey honey I wrote a haiku about Kamala Harris in the middle of the night.” My husband is a great writer and particularly clever with haikus so he took it up and produced the final draft:

CALM a La Harris

Maybe — our next President?

God, no bullets fly

As we often do, we texted the haiku to our son, Noah, a commercial solar energy consultant out in Colorado, and a huge follower of politics. What he wrote back simultaneously was:

“HE’s OUT!” Biden had just announced that he would step out of the race. That sure sent my head spinning, and it hasn’t stopped!

I’m not alone. For at least half the nation (the half that supports CALM a La/WALZ) the last month has been dizzying and delightful, with an upsurge in her poll numbers. More young people are registering to vote, and earlier this week, a HELLUVA great piece in The Hill, by Sarah Fortinsky, appeared. It emerged out of an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” with Frank Luntz, a highly respected Republican (old style, not MAGA) pollster who is seeing “a broad shift” in the polls in favor of CALM a LA and her stellar running mate, TIM WALZ.

“Harris’s recent enthusiasm boost has tapped into part of the electorate that might not have otherwise voted in November had President Biden remained the party’s nominee…She’s bringing out people who are not interested in voting” for Trump (or Biden before he ditched the race. “So the entire electoral pool has changed. And if it continues in this direction, you have to start to consider Democrats winning the Senate and Democrats winning the House.”

Luntz said he hadn’t “seen anything like this happen in 30 days in my lifetime.” (Frank Luntz is 62 years old.) Luntz said, “I’m trying to do a focus group tonight with undecided voters under the age of 27 for a major news outlet. And I can’t recruit young women to this, because they don’t exist as undecided voters,” he said. Meaning they’ve all swung toward CALM a La!

So here we are, we Dems, poised to watch an amazing convention. We in CALM a La’s corner are sitting pretty. But as I was sitting on the sofa next to my daughter this morning, I found myself holding my breath. Jocelyn is my beloved older daughter who will turn 40 years old on October 16th — my God, how can MY daughter be turning 40? Exceptionally bright and articulate, she is very very convincing as she voices her fears and concerns. Lifting both hands and cradling them over her chest, she said, “I know how well Kamala’s doing and I don’t doubt her at all, I would love to see her win. But I’m still walking around with eggs in my chest,” hoping and praying that the enthusiasm CALM a La is generating now, and the good polls, will hang on through Election Day!

It was my mom, Dena Rotondo Ricci, who coined the phrase, “I’m walking around with EGGS IN MY CHEST.” A first generation American, Mom was fluent in Italian. Her language was rich in Italian sayings. All I can say is that the Italian sayings she carefully recorded in a flowered journal in her perfect handwriting totally nail an array of thoughts and emotions. Just imagine: how would it feel to be walking along trying to balance a dozen eggs against your chest. It delights me that Jocelyn used that phrase — one of my mother’s very favorites.

My very insightful daughter said something else this morning: “We really have to be careful of the echo chamber effect,” and how it can lead us Dems astray. In other words, just because all of our family and friends and all the news outlets we prefer are over the moon about CALM a La and convinced she will win in November, there is a world of people out there who don’t see the same reality. One day last week, my daughter walked into her boss’ office — he’s a Republican — and he had The Boston Herald (a conservative tabloid) open on his desk. Enough said. It chastened her enthusiasm. Because clearly, he’s no CALM a La fan.

My daughter insists, and she’s absolutely right, that too often we get comforable listening only to those who agree with us, while there are a gazillion people in communities from Connecticut to California, from Minnesota to Texas, from Oregon to Ohio, who can barely stomach the idea of a WOMAN PRESIDENT, let alone a BLACK WOMAN PRESIDENT.

I don’t disagree with what she is saying: it’s certainly reasonable that we not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s not for a moment think that even though many young people, women and Blacks who were aghast at Biden being the alternative to Trump — are now flocking in enthusiastic droves to the Harris/Walz ticket, and even though the poll numbers look good, and they’re moving in the right direction — there are still, count them, 13 more days in August, 30 days in September, 31 in October and 4 (or 5, depending if you count ELECTION DAY.) THERE ARE 78 DAYS LEFT UNTIL ELECTION DAY.

OK, I know that my daughter — a brillliant (and beautiful) woman, an incredible mother and wife, an astonishingly competent health care professional, and a very careful and cautious planner — is right. But as much as I love and respect her, I’m not traveling down that road with her.

I am 71 years old, and for the first time in my life, I can see a real possibility that a woman, a BLACK woman, will become PRESIDENT OF these UNITED STATES! No matter that it’s risky, I am throwing myself heart and soul (like the painting above, which I did for Jocelyn’s office) into believing that CALM a LA is going to win. I won’t allow myself to think even for a moment that her HERstoric campaign will falter. The way I see it, the extraordinary momentum of these last four weeks seems like it’s Divinely guided. Or maybe it’s just that WOMEN somehow feel like for the first time in forever, we are standing up in droves, saying HELL NO, WE WON’T GO BACKWARD WITH THAT TRASH HEAP who is otherwise known in this column as THE DUMP. Because if we do, women will lose even more control over their bodies and their reproductive rights, God forbid. Isn’t it enough that women are dying now because they cannot get treated in hospitals for ectopic pregnancies and other birthing-related emergencies? Someone very very dear to me had an ectopic pregnancy a few years ago; had she not had emergency treatment, she too might have died.

So. I’m not going backward, and I won’t allow myself to think anything but positive thoughts. When you come face-to-face with a deadly cancer, as I did in 2002, discovering in a casual CT scan that you have a cantaloupe-sized tumor sitting squarely inside your chest (yes, exactly where the eggs used to rest),

I learned very quickly that I had to dispel each and every one of those negative thoughts that swarm our brains. Over and over again, you have to let them go, over and over again, you have to turn those worries into light, into positive, life-giving visualizations. Harnessing every bit of your imagination, you watch in your mind’s eye that damn tumor (and the others) shrinking, as you and your husband traipse for 13 weeks straight to Sloan Kettering for highly intensive treatment with five searing chemo drugs.

To maintain your optimism, you start doing art, even though you are not an artist. You also develop (overnight) a kind of radical faith. You begin to believe that the Universe — and its billions of galaxies and infinite number of stars and planets — is a manifestation (or better yet, a WOmanifestation) of the Divine, and no matter what happens to you, you are going to be OK. Because no matter what happens, you will live with (or die, that too is always possible at any moment for any number of reasons.) Once you accept the possibility of death, and you also know that death is nothing to fear when the Universe is DIVINE, and GLOWING, and that there is an ALL-LOVING FORCE that some people call God and you believe in that God.

And that your soul is a very tiny, but divine speck within it. Well then you have radical faith that there will be a good outcome. And so you are CALM. And accepting.

When all is said and done, the CALM a LA ticket will, as I’ve said so many times before, WALZ onto the stage to a thrilling reception. Just picture those two already famous couples, CALM a LA and her hubby, and TIM WALZ, and his wife. Watch them in their euphoria after they win, waving their arms wide, side to side. Side to side.

They aren’t worrying about eggs. Anymore.