My Year

It was thirty-five years ago, more or less, that it all happened. 

And yet, in the past week or so, since the Impeachment all became a reality, it has come back to me and made me wonder.

Many, many details are fuzzy, as one would expect after all that time. But the basic premise -- that what was good, what was right should prevail -- is still clear.

We were members of a very active women's club, and we'd produced a wonderful, wonderful cookbook to sell. All of the proceeds from the sales went directly to benefit our county's shelter for abused women and their children. Could there be a better project?

The people closest to the cookbook had big and beautiful plans for marketing, and many of these were actually achieved. But at some point a new president of the club was elected. She was following a very dynamic leader, and the cookbook wasn't a priority for her administration. In fact, it seemed that she and her supporters did everything they could think of to thwart those plans. The trouble began at the very beginning of her term in office. The cookbook project was so vast in scope, and many club members were now working outside the home, either full or part-time, that it made sense to have co-chairs of the committee, to break down the work into manageable pieces. The president wouldn't hear of it. "This is my year" was the refrain that began then and was to continue for the next eleven months, and was how she badgered the membership to get her own way. 

Within a short time, as plan after plan was shot down, opportunity after opportunity negated, the club split into factions: The Good, The Bad, and . . . erm . . . The Neutral. It all became Ugly, and just as my year was coming to a close, the cookbook core -- The Good Guys -- and their handful of supporters resigned from the club.

Not many years later, as more and more members' lives became busier and busier, the club dissolved. The Good Guys are still a close-knit group, thirty-five years later. We continue to support the battered women's shelter in our own quiet way. But we no longer are so sure that what is good, what is right, will prevail.