Breakfast Tea with Eleanor

 

The bowl of tea Rick brings me early this morning perfumes the bedroom. He crawls back into bed.

We are both reading. He's researching the novel he plans to write. I'm on the final third of Blanche Weissen Cooke's trilogy on Eleanor Roosevelt. We read bits to one another.

I thought I knew the period from what I've read in the past. In high school and university, U.S. history courses never made it beyond the Depression if we got that far.

What amazes me is that many of the issues the world is dealing with now they were dealing with then. The difference is technology, but the humans living in that era fought with the same ideologies.

I would like to clone Eleanor and have her hold a majority in the Congress and on the Supreme Court. Her view of the world softened FDR, but not as much as she wanted. The U.S. would have far less problems had he listened and acted more, but politics can curtail progress at any time. 

If by some miracle, Eleanor was sitting at my dining room table we could share a bowl of tea. I would want to see her reaction to the negro gains, an issue she worked tirelessly on. As pleased as she would be on the progress, she would also know that white supremacy and antisemitism still exist and work to eliminate them need to be continued.

I bet she would admit that she was wrong about the ERA, although her reasons were sound for the time, and she spent a large portion of her time advancing women opportunities. 

I would tell her that I had no idea how the government limited their use of women in WWII despite all the Rosie the Riveter posters.

The treatment of refugees is the same today, I'd say. We could commiserate about all the refugees who died because a U.S. officer delayed their exit visas from France.

As mothers, I could sympathize with her having all her sons fighting in WWII. I could tell her my relief after having a daughter knowing she would never be cannon fodder, but wouldn't tell her that had I had a son during Vietnam, I would drive him to Canada rather than die in that unnecessary war. It was more patriotic to stop the war, I would say. Would she agree? 

Sitting at my table, Eleanor begins to fade. My respect for her will never fade.