Informal Survey of Women over Seventy

The women in my informal survey range in age from seventy to over one hundred. 
These are the women who were born between 1910 and 1940.  They represent mothers and daughters who are now grown into their later years.

They are children of pioneers, some of them immigrating as younglings with their parents, some of them heading West in covered wagons (where the railroads hadn't reached yet) with their families to homestead in areas still available early in the last century. 

They are children of families established in America before there was a United States. 

They are daughters of America, mothers of America, grandmothers of America.  They are our Elders.

The oldest remember the pioneering treks.  They remember WWI.  They remember the Roaring Twenties.  They remember the Dirty Thirties.  They remember WWII.  They remember the Fifties.  They remember the Tumultous Sixties.  They remember the Seventies, Eighties, and Nineties. 

We know these women, we love these women, we respect these women.

So. 

Why am I bringing them up?  It's not even close to Mother's Day, what's to be maudlin about? 

One of the last things these women are is maudlin. 

They are realists who have made it through worse times than any of us are likely to face in our lives. 

Oh.  The point?

The survey question? 

One of my friends, who happens to be over a hundred years old, said something out of the blue quite a while ago.  Recently someone else said something similar so I started asking around for the opinions of everyone over seventy that I know. 

Men or women in politics, in Washington, in the White House? 

Every one (except for one who said she didn't know) of the women I asked said women.  Some thought about it for quite a while, others paused, some answered immediately. 

These women are not feminists; they are not activists; they are not 'politically inclined'.  They're just ordinary little old ladies.

Some of their reasons why:  "It's time."  "The men have messed things up long enough."  "I hate to say this, but I'm afraid the women are going to have to clean things up."  "Women are tougher than men."

I ought to have kept track, written it all down, recorded it or something.  I didn't because as I say this was just an informal survey, a question spurred by women of that age group bringing up the subject and asked out of curiosity.  I guess I asked maybe thirty just in passing over the last three weeks.  It's not a big important thing but as the answers continued to add up, it did have an impact on me. 

Just sayin'.