On Election Day, November 5th, 2024, as voters cast their ballots and contemplate a future today, and possibly electing the first woman president of the United States — or not, depending on your preference — I have heard from so many friends and even family members, many of them women, many of them hopeful, many of them anxious.

I am trying to follow the advice on SNL Saturday night: "Keep Kamala and Carry Onala." But in recent hours I have felt emotions rising in me again, as they did in 2016, when Hilary Clinton put about “eighteen million cracks” in that final, highest, hardest glass ceiling, yet fell short — and again I hope that America is as good and decent and fair and brave as I have always thought it to be.

Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress (1968) and first to run for president (1972), was often quoted as saying:

"I have certainly met much more discrimination in terms of being a woman than being Black, in the field of politics.”

My mother, Adelaide Storer Rowley, was born in 1920, the year women earned the hard-won right to vote, and she passed in 2016, a few years shy of 100. I am thinking of her today, and what she might think of this possible history in the making. She was a Republican so I can guess.

I am thinking of all the women in my life now, starting with my wife, Carolyn, who taught me long ago about what Chisholm had said and who taught me so many things about how men could be allies but never really understand what it felt like to be seen as less than, treated as less than and paid less than men, among countless other injustices. I am thinking of my late mother-in-law, Georgiann, who encouraged me to “blast off” when I wanted to go to space.

I am thinking with pride of them — and of our daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, who grew up in a time when so many more things were possible for women than they were in the 1950s when Carolyn and I were born. I have always taught our girls they can do anything, achieve anything and be anything they want — and to believe that.

And also on my mind today are nieces Caitie, Michele and Kristin; my cousin Kim and other cousins around the country, and so many other women close to me and for whom I would do anything to give them the world.

I believe in the promise of America and a future that is limitless for all Americans, no matter their gender, race, ethnicity or religion. The campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris has gone out of its way not to focus on the fact that she would be the first woman president, or the first one who is Black and South Asian. They have tried not to make it about that, which is the smart political move.

So let me say it here, on the Global Trail: America, isn’t it time — or way past time — to elect a woman president? Not just for the women of our country, but for all of us men too, sons and brothers and fathers and more. That’s the kind of country we should be, and it’s long overdue.

I already voted, and so, as Americans go to the polls, I am thinking of Shirley, and Mouse (Adelaide), and Carolyn, and Mary and Liz — and so many more people who made my life better, richer and stronger — the magic of my mom and wife and daughters and all the women in my life, and also all the little girls who will see that the sky’s the limit, the powerful female CEOs who fought their way past those glass ceilings, the women astronauts and fighter pilots and combat veterans too, and all the single women cat ladies who will get the respect they deserve, and all the women in the lives of all the men in this country.

Isn’t that America — beyond the last, highest, hardest barrier — the kind of country we should aspire to be? Isn’t that the America that is slowly becoming the more perfect union that everyone from the Founders to Barack Obama pointed us toward? Isn’t that America where we should be today?

Vote your conscience. Vote your politics. Vote for the best, wisest, most decent and inclusive, most experienced and qualified candidate, of course. But have a care, as well, for your mom.

—Storer Rowley

Substack