Thank you, Hillary

I happen to love Hillary. Not so much her politics (though I frequently agree with them), but her endurance. I look at her, and I think: "Everything they said and did to you, Hillary, they would have said and done to me." Something about that independence, and lawyerliness (a certain sassy, witchy strength), combined in a not too, too unattractive package just seems to enrage some people, like a red flag to a bull. (Paradoxically, I almost like Sarah P., because she has escaped this fate, and is very beautiful and powerful, and that suggests to me that we are coming closer to the day when smart and hot are not mutually exclusive concepts - yes, I know the smart is in question, and that's where I say almost, because if she were definitely smart, I would like her even when I don't, if that makes sense to anyone other than me. Run on sentence, deep breath!)

But politics is not the point of my blog, and what I want to thank Hillary for is something we can all agree on. Thank you, Hillary, for the expression, "It takes a village." Those words crystallized something many of us knew intuitively, but had not yet organized intellectually in quite so clear a way.

I have a village. I have written about my "supportive spouse," and he lives in the village, but it has many other residents: a nanny, a house cleaner, a launderer, an errand doer, and a gardener. There are people who accept packages; people who deliver things (clothes, groceries, birthday presents); and people who teach things (flute, baseball). They are all part time (don't assume I have the staff of an English country house), but without them, we . . .
no . . . I, could not do what I do. Without them, I would not have the freedom to travel and try cases and work weekends.

I am grateful for that freedom, even as I recognize the inherent circularity of all: working so hard to make the money to pay the people who make it possible for me to work so hard.

Recently, I was speaking with the (female) general counsel of a Fortune 200 company, and she told me a story about the company's CEO, also a woman. The CEO has children about the same age as mine (who are 10 and 13), and the story is that Ms. CEO has authorized her staff to accept calls from her children, when she is in meetings and on conference calls, and the staff are charged with enforcing the rules: "No, Tommy, thirty minutes is the limit for Nintendo on a school night! You have to finish your math flash cards."

Listening to the story, I was shocked -- I have always rigidly maintained the professional/personal line with my (always female) secretaries -- but also, somehow, thrilled. Is that difference between me and a CEO? She knows how to ask for the help she needs to coordinate all her responsibilities? Or has she crossed an inexcusable line?

The former, I think. And yet, how could I ever ask my secretary to do that? Or expect my children to accept it?

What do you think? Is part of your village at the office?