Sometimes I forget what an important time I am living in. I have to pause and remember that history is being made in front of my eyes and that I am a part of making that history. This is an unforgettable election we are currently witnessing. The outcome is either going to be the first demagogue elected president or the first woman. Either way, the course of future events will be forever changed.

What is currently happening in the world will be written down in textbooks. Ten, fifteen, fifty years from now, students will sit where I sat and take notes on what I lived through. One day my grandchildren will ask me about this time and I will attempt to remember what it was like and in bedtime stories chronicle for them the history I was helped shape.

I know I won’t remember every moment of this historic period or even remember that those moments were historic despite the fact I lived them.

Only a few months later, I don’t know whom I was with or where I was when Hillary Clinton was named the first female candidate of a major political party. I can’t remember anything about the night it became possible for a woman to be the president of the United States of America.  

But, then, there are other times when I am fully aware I’m living in history, times I don’t have to pause and remember that history is being made. Standing in the line in the brisk autumn cool with sun shining down on my cheeks, already red from excitement, at a time I should’ve been in school. I knew that was history. Fingers anxiously fastening a campaign button to my shirt and smoothing out the sticker that had begun to peel from my moving it from outfit to outfit. I knew that was history. Walking into the gymnasium crowded with news crews and college kids and young families and old women wearing “I’
m with her” shirts. I knew that was history. Seeing, only four weeks before the election, Hillary Clinton walk out onto the assembled stage and greet the audience, packed close together and thrumming with excitement, and listening to her vow to protect my rights and make my country better. I knew that was history.

The people at the rally knew that was history, too. I could see it in the faces of the students standing next to me and the mother with her child resting on her shoulders behind me. There was an air of importance that is almost never present in a gymnasium. It was an occasion to remember, seeing the women who very well may be the first female president speak, and everyone was actively trying to commit it to memory.

She will make history, not just with her policies of equality and education and economic reform, but with doors she will open and the hope she will give young girls considering a career in public service. For years to come, people will talk about the impact she will have had. I will be able to talk about her and this. I will be able to tell them of this election and of the time I shook her hand and of the canvassing I did to see a woman become president.

Right then, at that rally, I was a part of the history that will be Hillary Clinton. And as November draws closer and with it the conclusion of this momentous election, I am trying to remember even more of it, the history being made.