I Left It All On The Field

by Susan Bergeron

October 30: Fifty years ago I played girl's Junior Varsity field hockey and would have been winding up the season right about this time of year. I still remember that exhilarating feeling of "leaving it all on the field" after a tough season. The memory of the fresh wind blowing through my long hair after a day of stifling classwork, the click of the hockey sticks, the cheers and jeers from the bleachers, the girl's red hockey skirts flapping in the crisp fall air are school memories that never seem to fade for me. But whether we won or lost, if I knew I did everything I was supposed to do, if I attended every practice, showed up on time, listened to the coach, I could settle onto the bus for the ride home with a feeling of satisfaction that assured me that, indeed, I had left it all on the field. I beamed with joy, proud to be a part of my team as I scribbled Hawkettes Rule!  in the frost on the bus window and sang Ninety Nine Bottles of Beer On The Wall  louder than any of the other bouncing teenage athletes. How sad that in the year 2020 most aspiring teenage athletes find their playing fields and bleachers empty as a ghost town. The worst pandemic in one hundred years has cut short their dreams.

Once again, I have that feeling that I've left it all on the field. But unlike the days of my youth, the wonderful feeling of self-satisfation isn't there quite yet. And I don't think it will be in the event my team loses this time. I fear I will collapse, as will my beloved nation. I wait, filled with anxiety and fear, only days before the conclusion of the most consequential election of America's history. I pace the floor at night. I barely sleep. I obsessively check the polls, work the phones, check for Huffpost alerts, keep the TV channels tuned to cable news 24/7.

I joined the resistance the day after Trump was inaugurated. I knew what he was. I knew he could destroy this country but I never knew just how bad it would be. I attended protest rallies, attended town halls, wrote post cards to congressmen. I called senators. I begged them to impeach Trump the Criminal. His impeachment was a half-fulfilled promise that turned out to be a disgusting show of depraved sycophancy on the part of Republican senators devoid of any semblance of what passes for ethics in what has become Trump's hijacked GOP. The wild card was the invisible freight train known as the deadly Coronavirus, barreling across America with its mighty Covid Engine No. 19 coming straight for our citizens, driven by the massive horsepower of death and disease. It would roll over hundreds of thousands of people, crushing them to death. Trump could have stopped that train but instead threw open the crossing gates and told the people it was OK to cross the tracks!

I joined the Biden campaign seventeen months ago. I made my decision quickly. I saw who he was, too. I saw Joe as electible because of his Centrist appeal, his legacy of working to pull the country out of The Great Recession during the eight years of the Obama administration. I saw Joe Biden as an honest man of principles decency and experience. I walked the streets of New Hampshire in the sweltering heat of summer and the ice and snow of winter, canvassing before the pandemic came. When the campaign pulled us off the streets, I drove around in a pick-up truck with a bull horn shouting "Vote for Joe Biden!" I made thousands of phonecalls to registered voters. Biden came in 5th place in NH and I was crushed, but I didn't stop. I campaigned and received 31,000 votes, during a pandemic, and won a seat as delegate from Rhode Island. Joe swept the nation in three consecutive Super Tuesdays, blowing all the other Primary candidates out of the water. I bought a round trip ticket to Milwaukee. And then, as the raging pandemic picked up steam, the DNC Convention was cancelled. I ended up voting virtually to nominate Joe Biden for nominee of the Democratic party for President of the United States. I will remember this as one of the proudest moments of my life.

I watched Trump slide down in the polls as he kept making mistakes all over the place. As he jetted about the country on a killing spree with his Superspreader events, Joe stayed the course, playing it safe by following CDC guidelines for Covid-19 mitigation while Trump poured on the ridicule. Despite all of Trump's outrageous lies, the useful idiot Rudy Guliani's hack and dump attempts, and the shameful attacks leveled at the Biden family by the Trump State News Channel (aka Fox News---Trump's insideous echo chamber of misinformation), Joe's star kept rising. And now here he is on the cusp of victory. But 2016, with good reason, has filled Democrats with paranoia and a reluctance to rest on their laurels.

I persisted, quite literally through blood, sweat, and tears. In the midst of this long difficult campaign I lost a lot. I lost my sister, I lost my beloved Peepers the cat, I lost my gallbladder, I lost 25 pounds, and I lost 230,000 of my fellow Americans due to the apathy and incompetence of a narcissistic megalomaniac in the White House. Today I worry about losing my humanity if Trump wins the presidency again. I'll be so angry, so hurt, so frightened if that happens. Right now I feel a little like Scarlet O'Hara. I can't think about it right now. I'll think about it tomorrow. But I do know this: Every damn bit of fight has been sqeezed out of me to push back against the tyrant Donald Trump and for the Great Unifier Joseph Biden. I left it all on the field.