Breakfast with the Queen

Queen Latifa, that is.  Oh, and two thousand other women.  And a few odd men.  Including our mayor.  And governor. Now breakfast for me usually involves a bottomless cup of coffee and a couch and two chirping children, so this was quite the treat.  I got gussied up and headed to midtown with Mom to attend The New York Women's Foundation Celebrating Women 2009 breakfast. Despite the recession, it was a packed house as always.  And the program and performances and speakers didn't disappoint. Women arrived in clusters to the bold and rhythmic beats of Grupo Ginga Capoeira USA.  Award-winners included Ambassador Swanee Hunt, Angelique Kidjo, Lilly Ledbetter, and the Queen herself.  Each of these women spoke with her own voice and vigor about living life as a woman, and about living life as a champion of women.  Each told a different story, but a singular message threaded through: it is as important as ever to help women (and children and families).  And to help women is to help society as a whole.

And as the casts of thousands whipped out checkbooks, I looked around me.  At the many faces from many places.  At the power suits and dreadlocks and ponytails.  At the youth and the experience.  At the grandmothers and mothers and daughters and sisters - literal and figurative.  All gathered in one vast room in the morass of midtown.

And though I still proudly think of myself as a girl, and I'm used to my magical mornings at home with my girls, for one split second, on this fungible rainy Thursday morning in Manhattan, I felt like a woman. And in that moment I felt a sense of pride, and power, and pull.  To do something good.  To be something good.  To raise my little girls into women who do good things.  Into women who might come with me to a bold breakfast in midtown a few years down the pike.

Thanks for breakfast, Mom!