‘This milestone is massive.’ SLO woman on Kamala Harris inauguration, campaign win

He’ll never know anything different.

My 4-year-old grandson won’t watch the presidential inauguration. Nor will he be impressed when Kamala Harris is sworn in as vice president. He won’t even consider the implications of an incoming cabinet whose members are equally divided by gender, male and female.

These changes are happening so early in his life that they’ll be as humdrum as smart speakers, as ordinary as travel to the moon. Rather than being historically significant, they’ll be the backdrop against which other, more relevant events unfold.

My grandson won’t have to look at photos of his nation’s leaders and question why they all look the same. He won’t ponder why certain people are in power and why others can’t even raise their hands to be heard.

Fortunately, he’ll never know anything different.

I realized this back in November 2020, when the election results were finally tallied and Joe Biden was declared the winner of the presidential race. My grandson and I were cuddled up with my iPad as I explained the concept of elections in the simplest terms.

I showed him a photo of our current president. Next, I pointed to the president elect. Then our eyes lit on Kamala Harris.

Of course, he was non-plussed. Pictures of adults seldom captivate a preschooler.

But my eyes misted over. I knew exactly what she meant. A female candidate on a major political ticket was no longer a campaign stunt or an historical footnote.

The long-held baton had finally been passed. Now, a woman stood ready to assume our country’s top spot at a moment’s notice. My buttons were bursting with pride!

My young grandson couldn’t understand the gravitas of this moment any more than I could embrace the space launches that my father woke me up to watch.

He’d excitedly roust his young family out of bed before dawn, then tune out our complaints as we whined that the launches were boring. Our perspective was way too narrow to grasp the magnitude of what we saw.

I’m not naïve enough to think we’ve reached any pinnacle. Progress regarding gender equality has been a series of fits and starts since our nation’s earliest days.

Still, this milestone is massive. It’s important to stop and revel in all it means.

My grandson doesn’t know anything different. Nor should he. He has more important issues at hand — such as riding his bicycle, wrestling with his brother and learning how to write his name.

Still, our lives overlapped at this critical juncture. We’ll each make sense of it in our own way.