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collaboration, not competition, is the name of the game. Women need to support other women and criticize only with affection and concern. Of course we can disagree, but we must disagree with respect, not slander. There’s room for all of us at the top—not just the Queen Bee.
    But in the years since I started observing HRC and researching her, I have come to understand that she and her partner in power, Bill, are brilliant at controlling access. You don’t get to say hi without meeting them at fund-raisers. So far I have met Hillary at several fund-raisers and she has always been most cordial since I parted with my money. My childhood pal, Alan Patricof, chair of her finance committee, must see a lot more of her. The Clintons, like all politicians, need money. And they weren’t born with it. So they must court the rich—one of the major flaws of our political system.
    Sadly, our political system favors those born with money. Look where it got us with George W. Bush! And his father! And his grandfather! (See Kitty Kelley’s The Family for the complete history of those hypocrites.) But Dick Cheney, who was born middle class, may be even worse. So money is not alone the problem.
    The last fund-raiser I attended was Hillary’s birthday party at Tavern on the Green on October 26, 2006. I’m sure I’ll attend many more before 2008.
    Hillary greeted me warmly, but I’m sure I’ll have to give far more generously if I want more time. And why not? She has no leisure. She must plan what time she has carefully. What does she need with me? If her political fortunes rise even further, she’ll get glowing press. If they fall, people will attack. It’s human nature. We love winners and have contempt for losers.
    The Hillary birthday was part of a weeklong Clinton Cashonalia. Even the faithful claimed to the New York Times that they were “Clinton-ed out.”
    And I was a pisher with my two-thousand-dollar contribution. I tried to get my writer friends to come and make a writers’ table, but not one of them had the requisite dough. Cultivating the rich has never been my forte, but then, I’m not a politician. My tendency is to love those who are richer in words than money. I’ve always been out of step in America in loving poets more than politicians.
    Still, the birthday was really interesting. My husband and I sat at a table with accomplished women—doctors, lawyers, and political fund-raisers.
    We had fun. We knew lots of people. And the sheer numbers were astounding. Bill Clinton looked sort of dazed when I said hello to him. And Hillary was warm as toast. She has really grown in office. And I . . . I knew I wasn’t there for truth, justice, and the American way. Still, I wish Hillary well. And I plan to work for her presidential campaign. All the smart women I know say she can’t possibly win. But she has surprised us before and I know she will again. Her capacity for growth is what I admire most about her.

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    MY MOTHER, MY DAUGHTER, AND ME
    Writing an autobiography and making a spiritual will are almost the same.
    —SHOLEM ALEICHEM
     
     
     
    All we know of love comes from our mothers. Yet we have buried that love so deep that we may not even know where it comes from. If we have been wounded and have grown scar tissue over our hearts, we confuse the scar tissue with the heart itself, forgetting the wound that caused it.
    My first memories of my mother come from the year my younger sister was born. I do not remember ever being the center of the universe, because when I came into the family, my older sister—four and a half to my zero—was already there.
    I am four and a half when my younger sister is born, and my mother lies in bed like a queen receiving guests, children, parents, friends. She is beautiful and brown-eyed, with reddish-brown hair, and she wears a padded silk bed jacket over a silk nightgown. The women in my family wear bed jackets only in times of great ceremony—childbirth, illness, death—and