There’s something about a woman, a man will say.

But, a woman will say there’s something about being a woman.

Elizabeth Warren, in particular.

It might have been Jon Stewart’s DAILY SHOW, where many of us first laid eyes on her. What struck me was the quickness of her physicality. Similar to my own, the body ever reacting to the mind’s impetus, she was rarely still. She sat forward, she leaned in, she used her core to generate every declaration. And, of these, she had legion.

Here was a person who transcended all notions of gender to be driven solely by the workings of thought, reflection, analysis, purpose, and the kind of imagination which fueled creating practicable solution to the world’s biggest problems. And, ever fluent, she was able to express all this verbally, with an attitude of enthusiasm and confidence.

But, she also had a bright optimism about her, something I envied. Let’s admit it; regions of our vast country do produce certain behavioral profiles. The West coast is laid back; the East, intense; and, the Mid-West is transparent. Warren was born in Oklahoma. People out there are straight ahead, no nonsense, unpretentious. They have little notion of class, or class consciousness.

Unfortunately, minus the optimism our politics still have all those notions, in spades.

And so, embodying irony, here was an American from the Midwest who fiercely opposed everything class based, and every bias toward it. Yet, America couldn’t buy in, because we wouldn’t accept that we were indicted by it. Even America’s women. We couldn’t trust that a woman who hadn’t donned even the female mantle of the business class executive could lead all of us toward major restructuring of our entire society. Our collective subconscious was still entrenched, steeped in those notions which declared that only a deeper voice and a smarter suit could carry us to where we needed to be.

I really feel Elizabeth Warren. Especially today. I can taste the tears, likely cried into her husband’s shirt. I can hear the rallying cry of that contingent who saw through it all and remained loyal to the end. I can see honest, determined, conviction stagger in the face of harsh confrontation with the kind of raw power that defeats. My heart, and especially my mind, cries out with her.

As only a woman’s can.

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© 3/5/2020 Ruth Ann Scanzillo.