Ancora Ann Richards.

Qui l'obituary.

Qui un bellissimo articolo sulla sua lotta di alcolista.

Ann Richards nelle parole di Judith Warner.

Ann Richards’s Big Life

“A woman’s place is in the dome.”

The words today sound archaic, a tinny relic of a distant feminist past. But just 16 years ago, they had bite. They were fun. They triumphantly emblazoned a T-shirt with a picture of the Texas state capitol that Ann Richards held high on the day, in 1990, when she was elected governor.

It was a different time then. Feminism still felt alive. It produced “Backlash.” It gave us Anita Hill. And Hillary (yes – Hillary) and Bill, for that matter, and a whole climate of expectation and excitement and anticipation of change.

It was an era when Anna Quindlen could hear Richards give her famous “silver foot” speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention and come away feeling “proud as hell to be a woman.” Richards’s life trajectory – she was a former housewife and mother of four whose marriage had foundered when she entered politics – was the kind of story, then, that gave women a thrill. Many women of her generation had late-in-life careers. It felt real. Richards herself was real – as Quindlen put it in her “Life in the 30’s” column, “she was what men sometimes like to call a ‘real woman’ – pretty and dressed up and obviously good fun. And she was what women like to call a real woman, too – smart and not too perfect, a good ol’ girl, not an ice princess. The kind of woman who, just like you, keeps pantyhose with runs, to wear under slacks.”

Richards, looking back at the end of her single term in the governor’s office, talked about the lofty goals that had pushed her into politics, but also took pains to keep it all real. “I did not want my tombstone to read, ‘She kept a really clean house,’ ” she said.

It was an honest and clear-minded thought. An impolitic thought – much like Hillary Clinton’s 1992 admission that she wasn’t much for staying home and baking cookies. Yet, it was the kind of thought that virtually no one – politician or not – is likely to voice today. Not merely because of the immediate fallout that strikes anyone who does not sufficiently genuflect before the altar of Home. But because, I fear, in this generation, women have lost sight of certain simple truths: “a really clean house” (if you clean it yourself) is incompatible with a really big life.

This should be perfectly obvious. But, unfortunately, for women just like me, I’m not at all sure that it is.

Richards’s tombstone comment sent a little ripple of upset down my spine as I started to think about her death. I felt a twinge, almost, of jealousy. A mere glimmer, barely conscious, of self-reproach: No one would ever be tempted to put on my tombstone that I keep a neat house.

I looked at the pink and blue stacking boxes, the wire mesh in-and-out boxes and the shoe trees that I’d spent a precious work hour hunting down at the Container Store, convinced that I couldn’t work – couldn’t exist – a second longer without finding a way to tame our mess. Then I thought of Ann Richards and her marvelous, melodious voice that seemed, in 1988, to announce big change, and that self-indulgent little sliver of regret turned to something much darker: disgust. Which was followed then by what felt – and here I go waxing archaic again – like liberation.

To hell with all that, I thought, with a deep mental bow to Caitlin Flanagan. To hell with it all.

Ann Richards, Hillary Clinton – those women of that turbulent, transitional period of the 80’s into the 90’s – had it right. You can’t clean house and make it to “the dome” too. You can’t bake cookies and make it to the Senate. And that’s not just because there isn’t enough time. More profoundly, it’s because it just isn’t human to do all that. With all of our spouting off these days about the glorious variety of women’s Choice, there is one basic choice that we are not humanly able to make: we cannot choose what kind of people we are or what we are driven, drawn, destined to do. The best we can do is be ourselves – and stand up for what it takes to bring our self into being.

I hate to bake cookies. I will never have a neat house. And I am sick and tired of ruining my days – and my family’s for that matter – trying to be someone I am constitutionally incapable of being.

I want to be like Ann Richards, who in the later years of her life freed herself from the need to do things perfectly, relinquished the desire to be all things to all people, and focused, she said in a 2001 interview, on living a life filled with love, fun and work.

“Do you sense the defiance of the formerly guilt-ridden?” The Times’ Joyce Wadler was moved then to muse.

To Hell With All That. How’s that, governor, for an epitaph?

Judith Warner, September 14, 2006

La casa di Ann.

“I did not want my tombstone to read, ‘She kept a really clean house,’”*
Ann Richards, 1 settembre 1933 – 13 settembre 2006. Governatore del Texas tra il 1991 e il 1995, prima donna a ricoprire l'incarico.

* Ho trovato la frase di Ann Richards in questo post di Judith Warner (solo per abbonati), in cui trovo anche queste linee di profonda saggezza: You can’t bake cookies and make it to the Senate. And that’s not just because there isn’t enough time. More profoundly, it’s because it just isn’t human to do all that. With all of our spouting off these days about the glorious variety of women’s Choice, there is one basic choice that we are not humanly able to make: we cannot choose what kind of people we are or what we are driven, drawn, destined to do. The best we can do is be ourselves – and stand up for what it takes to bring our self into being..

Altre citazioni del Governatore Richards sono qui.