Keiko has voted.
At 90, life is starting to seem like more of a burden than an adventure to her, but there is one last thing on her bucket list and that is to see a woman president. Keiko does not give a crap about who Hillary Clinton is beyond the fact that she is a woman and a Democrat. She has said to me over and over that she never, ever thought men would let this happen, that a woman would be able to fight her way to the top. When Hillary wins, she will be absolutely triumphant.
To Keiko this is a win over all the ways in which she was treated unfairly in this life because of her sex, and all the ways in which men treated her badly in her personal life. Keiko isn't one to feel sorry for herself, but she is one to hold a grudge. She's nice to everyone but she thinks men are women's worst enemies. She's got lots of examples to prove it. She has seen women get beat down by men so many times that she can't believe she's about see a woman win it all.
Keiko and I disagree on a legion of things, but on the subject of politics, we are the same. Her father was a socialist, she is a Chicago Democrat (she calls herself this proudly) and I'm the pinko you all know and love. Keiko's approach to my education involved a political education as well. We watched the Watergate Hearings together, she came and got me off the playground to watch Nixon resign, we watched the McNeil/Leher report while eating dinner, we watched every political convention. The best lesson she ever gave me, though, was when I was running for some sort of student government thing in grade school. On the morning of the election, my dad told me that to be polite, I should vote for my competition. The way he put it, it seemed like some sort of tradition - you each vote for each other and cancel each other out.
I was standing at the bus stop after this when to my surprise, I was approached by Keiko, still in her dressing gown. She walked up to me and whispered in my ear. "Vote for yourself," she said, and walked away.
Today Keiko has voted for herself.
