Falling for Richardson
 Vicky Shorr - huffingtonpost.com
| | New Mexico governor and Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson speaks at a forum in San Jose, California, June 12, 2007. Richardson has been on a three-day campaign tour in California. (Reuters/Kimberly White) |
We rolled off the Pasadena Freeway, Mapquest in hand. Turned right, then left, went a ways, another left, and the sign said, "San Marino." The houses were getting bigger, along with the lawns and trees. Stately, positively, some of them - "Now it's starting to look right," my husband said. We were on our way to meet Bill Richardson.
"Billy," to my husband. Richardson himself wasn't there yet, but we recognized the rest of his old schoolmates from the New England boarding school where Richardson had pitched for the best baseball team they ever had. They weren't wearing ties - their nod to Southern California - but the rest of the uniform was pretty much unchanged. Blazers, linen trousers, some seersucker. Cordovan loafers or English tie shoes. The wives in the same sleeveless dresses they'd have packed when they went off to Stanford or Smith.
Richardson wouldn't have had to remember them to know just who they were - but he did remember, with a warmth and charm that proved he was half-Mexican, and that seemed suddenly like exactly what America needed most. When he spoke, it was again warm and strong, with gestures that I knew from my own life south of the border.
I had come to hear him on the issues, but this was a bipartisan crowd, and his focus was on the pressing need for us to come together, to find common ground so we can make some progress. I'd gone over to the bar earlier to get some water, but they were serving gin and tonic, and as I sipped and watched him turning first to this side, then to that one, with his smile, talking about how he'd both raised the teachers' salaries in New Mexico and lowered taxes, I realized I was, I have to say, falling in love.
He spoke on, about energy, Iraq - "I have one word to say to all of you," he started. He was standing in front of the small crowd, on the stone patio, and we were on the edge of the lawn. Precisely then, with no warning, the young daughter of the hosts, a girl of sixteen or so, keeled forward and fell, flat out, face down onto the pavement. We all heard her head hit.
There were of course doctors amongst us, including Richardson's former roommate, and they rushed forward, and the girl came to. Someone called 911, and the extremely presentable San Marino ambulance corps turned out, as well as the police, who knew the family, and Richardson shook all their hands before they took the girl to the hospital, and then he was off, to his next stop in Beverly Hills.
Most of the crowd trickled off then, but some of us lingered, unable, quite, to leave the scene. "She's fine, she's all right," the girl's father assured us, "have another drink," and we did. Nor could we shake the sense that it had somehow meant something. Was a sign of something, something wrong, broken, that maybe we couldn't fix this time.
A sign that even if Richardson is as terrific as he seems, as smart and as right-thinking, as able a diplomat as well, a man of the world the way this gang in office are boys in the club, it still wouldn't matter.
The girl had fallen, smacked her head on the pavement, and we were all there, all close by, and none of us had been able to do a thing. |
Vallarta Weddings
Editorials | Opinions | June 2007 
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