legacy

One of my treasures is a woman's journal from 1879. She begins her entries March 12 and finishes on April 2 the following year. In that she notes that she's leaving on a trip to Philadelphia, having received a telegram requesting her there, and that she will begin another volume the next day.

The pages are fragile, the ink faded to a muted brown, and the binding is delicate after over one hundred years and passing through who knows how many hands. Its hard cover reminds me of the mottled black-and-white composition books I used when I was young, but this is yellow and black. I've had it so long that I can no longer remember where I found it.

This morning on The Writer's Almanac (Public Radio), Garrison Keillor recounted that on this day in 1884 Susan B. Anthony "addressed the United States Congress, arguing for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution granting women the right to vote." The amendment failed to pass then but was finally made into law in 1920, fifteen years after she'd died. (I am shocked to realize that Anthony was my age when she appeared before Congress.)

I can't help marveling that these two women were in the world at the same time. There's no indication in her journal as to the writer's age, but she refers to a daughter who, I would guess, is probably in her late teens or early twenties. As best I've been able to decipher they lived in Cambridge, MA. I wonder what she imagined for herself...and what she wanted for her daughter.

Today is International Women's Day and I am grateful to both of these women and all who came before leaving their marks however great or small. They worked to gain their own voices in both profound and humble ways, and to give the same to us whom they could only imagine. I'm also aware of those who share the earth with me today. They are the countless women who struggle throughout the world to raise themselves, their families and their societies up from oppression.

I hope that you'll take a moment -- whenever you read this -- to tell just one woman how she has touched your life. She could be older or younger than you, present in your life today or alive in your memory, someone you've never met or your closest confidante. She's undeniably a part of your history and deserves to know.

I also wonder what history will judge to have been my own generation's contribution to the legacy.