The heart of the matter burns

ME TO MOM: Sun, Dec 24, 2017, 12:03 PM Bernie is on CNN - Jake Tapper

MOM TO ME: Tue, Dec 26, 2017, 5:45 AM: What did Bernie have to say on CNN? i missed it.

I remember when my 78-year-old mother told me she was moving from Waco back to the San Francisco Bay Area. I was standing outside the neo-Gothic library at King's College London, where I was earning my long-anticipated M.A. in Eighteenth-Century Studies. I wasn't behaving like someone my age, so why should she?

"Mom, you should not be moving so much (she had just moved to Waco from Alice, Texas the year before). Please, Mom, at least promise me this will be your last move."

"I won't promise that."

Bernie, my mother died after a catheterization on her heart. I won't get too much into it except to say had she not been packing boxes in the heat and running to doctors to check on the pain in her chest, she might be alive today. I don't know that for a fact, but her doctor told me, "We were doing it at this time because your mother was moving." She had turned 79 on August 15, 2018, and died exactly a week later, three days after my birthday.

Senator Sanders, your life is more important than running for President. You have already changed this nation. Your upending of the status quo will live on for decades, perhaps centuries. You are already in the history books. But you do not yet want to be history.

Your doctors may not tell you; your wife may not tell you; your friends may not tell you but I will. You are too fragile to pursue this. No one at 78 should be running for President anyway. It is a far more demanding job than working in an office, and at 58 I get tired from the 9 to 5.

What are you trying to prove? I realize aging is scary and death even scarier, but you are acting like my mom. On the one hand it's noble that this resplendent Southern woman was doing yoga and cracking jokes right up until the end, but I would prefer her cooking pot roast in Waco, listening to me whine about my job search.

Today was a beautiful day with AOC's support. But you know in your heart these days are numbered if you continue. My mother adored you and if she could speak from beyond, I know she'd ask you to please bow out. Show the country just how big that heart really is, and do it for your family, your friends, and all of us.

Photo: By Jake Bucci - Bernie Sanders, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46941765

What does age have to do with it? Plenty.

I am just a few months younger than Amy Klobuchar, 58, which in my view seems like the optimum age to be president. We have earned our grey hairs and crow's feet but usually still remember where we put the car keys.

While I did not like the manner in which Julian Castro berated Joe Biden for being forgetful in the last debate, he did raise a salient point. And this is not the first time it has come up in the campaign. What rankles me, though, is why does someone this age think they have the right to the highest office in the country? I am including Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in this. Elizabeth Warren is several years younger, and clearly energetic and vibrant.

My point is that if one genuinely cares about the nation and its people, they want to be sure they can care for us for four or eight years. I think of my late mother, may she rest in peace, and how she took in a kitten in her mid-70s. I immediately started to worry about what would happen to that cat if we lost Mom. Turns out, I was right, and neither my brother nor I could keep Susie and she ended up with a family I'll never meet. That breaks my heart.

I am the first to admit that aging is difficult. I have spent eight months on the job market even after earning my M.A. with Merit from an elite university. Would this be the case if I were 38? No. But how can I prove ageism and even if I could, would it matter? So I have gone from trying to understand what Hume meant in "Dialogues" to figuring out which outfits and hairstyles make me look most youthful. This is humiliating. Yet, what choice do I have? So it boggles my mind to think someone 20 years my senior is not just searching for a journalism or teaching job, but feels entitled to the Presidency.

Men in particular seem to think they can rule the world forever. I want a candidate who will improve the country and keep us safe, like Beto. I don't want a candidate who sniffs women's hair and relies on his years of service with an exceptional younger president to bolster his own CV. It won't fly for me, and it won't improve America.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons Images: