MOTHER OF THE BRIDE

Even if I had an invitation from you personally, Hillary, I wouldn't want to be one of your guests at Chelsea's wedding tomorrow. It's too many famous people, too much media attention on who will be there, what are they wearing, and how you and Bill look and react to each other.

I find myself wondering, as if tomorrow were a big day on my own calendar, how's "MOTB" Hillary doing? (I read that's what you, Mother of the bride, call yourself.)

I can't help picturing that other MOTB -- Palin's reaction when her daughter and her daughter's lover, (Father of their baby), told grandma Sarah that they were going to get married. Oh boy, you betcha Sarah was not pleased, not ready, willing, and able to put her arms around the couple and say, "That's wonderful!"

Palin's knowing forefinger, her convictions about what's right and wrong, her moral judgments -- yes indeed -- she's what she's been touting -- the "Mama Grizzly bear" protecting her cub -- not a thoughtful, in-tune-with-the-times Mom, supporting what these young people feel.

What about you, Hillary -- are you having an inner time-marching-on feeling, a there she goes sense of your daughter as she's off into another phase of life, another world, a place that you can't really share with her?

That's how I felt when our son got married

It's a relief -- the wedding day. The decision's been made. There's a new member of your family, and new thoughts about newlyweds making love, giving and taking, rapport, the intertwining of ideas -- how the two young people will be braiding themselves into a couple. Those sort of thoughts flutter and flow while you adjust to your new status.

As a parent-in-law you find yourself keeping out of the couple's private business, but taking it in, sharing it with the man you married. Even without talking about it, you know what he's feeling.

(Whenever you and Bill are together, we're touched, remembering the Lewinsky scandal, and the graceful, loving. abiding unity of the two of you.)

When you were running for president, we saw you growing, discovering how to just very simply
be yourself. That was a revelation for me -- liking you, rooting for you, shifting to Obama gradually, and somehow, liking and admiring you, more and more.

You've given me and a lot of women a new sense of the importance of intuition, truthfulness, inner strength -- as you reacted to the ups and downs, the winning and losing in the polls.

Oh sure, we'll study every slight expression that cameras allow us to have of President Clinton and reporters write about what he says and does. We'll see Chelsea in her prime, in her dress, and the serious-faced groom, Marc. (I hope he'll smile or grin -- the poor guy isn't accustomed to being observed as you three Clintons are.)

And you? The MOTB? I am sure you'll be a loving Mother taking in the day, the event, the moment when the bride and groom kiss -- radiating the right feeling of love and joy and the "ahh" that weddings make us feel. You'll be there, showing and teaching us to just simply -- be what we are.

I hope Sarah Palin, with her twitters, her busy selling-herself schedule, has time to watch some of what will be on the television news of the MOTB -- former First Lady, Senator, losing/winning candidate for President, our Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton.