Gabby_ A Story of Courage and Hope - Alison Hanson [59]
Her victory speech on the night of November 7, 2006, still viewable on YouTube, shows Gabby at her best. She was charismatic and poised, ready to start the job. She looked like a young woman who was going not just to Congress, but maybe to places beyond.
“I’m humbled by the support you’ve given me and the confidence you’ve granted me,” she told the cheering crowd at Tucson’s Doubletree Hotel. She thanked those who voted for her, “not just the Democrats, but the independents, the Republicans, the Greens, the libertarians, the vegetarians.” That was pure Gabby, giving a shout-out to the vegetarians.
She saluted Arizona political legends who’d come before her, including the late, longtime congressman Mo Udall. They’d shown her, she said, that she’d need to have “a gut to tackle the tough problems and the chutzpah to be able to stand up and say it like it is.”
Jim Kolbe, the outgoing Republican congressman, was kind enough to stop by the celebration, and after thanking him for his decades of service, she brought him onstage and hugged him.
She vowed she would not go to Washington as an ideologue. “In my TV ads, you saw that there are some lines I just won’t cross,” she said. “But there is one line I will never be afraid to cross. I will always extend my hands across the aisle to do what’s right for the American people, to build consensus, and to get the job done.”
I watched how Gabby ended her eight-minute speech. It was almost like she was shouting out her own countdown, and she was about to be launched right to Washington.
“I’m ready to roll up my sleeves,” she said, “to work hard for our troops now serving in Iraq.
“I’m ready to roll up my sleeves to get to work for the children in our country, who deserve the best schools, the best education.” The cheering almost drowned her out.
“I’m ready to roll up my sleeves for those of us who live in border regions and who deserve a practical solution to a complicated problem.
“I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work for future generations who deserve to inherit a planet as beautiful and extraordinary as the planet that all of us were born into!”
When the cheering subsided, she was more pensive. “We have a lot of work to do,” she said. “I just want to thank each and every one of you for making tonight possible. And I’m ready to get to work for all of us.”
She left the podium and I hugged her only briefly, knowing there were so many others in the room who wanted to shake her hand or hug her themselves.
Five years later, she’d be a woman taking baby steps through a torturous recovery. But on that night, so ready to roll up her sleeves, she had the stride of a giant.
CHAPTER NINE
With This Ring
Gabby always loved playing with my wedding ring. After we got married, we’d go out to dinner by ourselves and hold hands across the table. At almost every meal, she’d slip the ring off my finger and move it from her thumb to her forefinger to her middle finger. It was her little ritual, her way of fidgeting.
I understood it.
Gabby loved being married. She had waited until she was thirty-seven before settling down, and having gone all those years without a wedding band, she enjoyed the way her hand felt now that she had two rings at her disposal—hers and mine.
Her ring is a lapis-studded gold band with an inscription inside it, and Gabby was very touched when she first read the words I’d chosen to press against her finger: “You’re the closest to heaven that I’ve ever been.” I meant it as the ultimate compliment, considering that I’d already flown more than 10 million miles in space.
Gabby wouldn’t take off her own ring to play with it. But my tungsten ring, larger and looser, was like a favorite toy in her hands, something she’d borrowed from her closest playmate.
From the day we got married, she was drawn to my ring. She still is.
On January 13, 2011, five days