Travelling team supporter Elspeth McLean cooks scones and muses on the business of being a vice-presidential candidate.
When United States Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was delivering her famous speech last week I was slumped on the couch of an Invercargill motel, attempting to be a hockey mom.
If I'd remembered to put on lipstick, it had been chewed off long ago.
I was trying to decide whether the saggy stretch jeans had enough give to accommodate cheese and crackers, fruitcake and the scone halves I had deemed too tough to inflict on the school team I had come to watch.
Was 3pm too early for a glass of wine?
Probably. I wasn't staying with the team though, so it wouldn't be setting a bad example.
My hair was already plastered to my head because the Invercargill weather was so glorious I had to wear a cap to keep the sun out of my eyes.
And there she was. Sarah, the down- home gal.
Slim, fit-looking and immaculate with her dark eyes flashing behind her barely there these-make-me-look-serious-studious-and-strangely-sexy glasses. (I note her hairstyle has been criticised but I suspect she is trying to appeal to Amy Winehouse fans.)
I was wearing glasses too, complete with finger prints and unidentifiable bits of this and that, which I had to peer around to see the television screen.
Sarah's performance was impressive, polished to a showroom shine.
If she was nervous, you wouldn't have known it.
Her timing was great.
Not bad for a 44-year-old mother of five who has been mayor of a town smaller than Gore and who is now governor of Alaska, a state with about half the population of the greater Auckland area.
Not bad for a woman who told the audience she was "just your average hockey mom and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education better".
She went on to acknowledge the hockey moms in the audience with an aside - "they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull - lipstick".
By the time she finished the speech and paraded her children, including her 5-month-old baby, about the stage, I was cowering under the table with my sturdy pit-bull tail between my legs.
When the commentators came on to praise the speech, I began to whine, occasionally building up to a full-sized bark, hoping the motel owners would not insist I move to a new kennel.
I know I was supposed to ooh and aah at the sheer gutsiness of the God-bothering, gun-toting family woman taking on the big boys, and believe that it was somehow a blow for feminism, but it just did not feel right.
Mothers are clearly supposed to identify with her, but I wonder if that could backfire if she makes them feel inadequate.
That's how she affected me.
I realised the pinnacle of being an average hockey mom (I'm talking field hockey rather than ice to give it a more New Zealand context) has eluded me, not only because I do not have the right look.
It's not that I am unused to speaking in sound-bites.
It's just that "mouthguard, shinpads, stick, drink bottle", "is that pong your turf shoes or has something died in this car?", "what did the umpire do that for?", "who was that pass to?", "woo-hoo", "go!" or "whose son is that?" are not exactly the stuff of international television.
Will conservative women admire a mother trekking about the countryside vying for the vice-presidency with her Down's syndrome baby in tow?
And what about the pregnant teenage daughter Bristol and the hapless boyfriend Levi? Would they be marrying if Sarah was not in the public eye?
Has the pregnancy made Sarah re-think her views against explicit sex education?If you really are family-focused, would you want to expose your kids to the sort of scrutiny which inevitably goes with an American presidential campaign?
Could she have got more brownie points if she had kept the family out of the limelight altogether? That would be gutsy.
Delve into some of her previous political decisions and stands on issues, and it is hard to see how she might stand up to the hurly-burly of a tough presidential campaign without looking flakey.
At the time of writing, the micro-managers and gaffe-governors were keeping her away from doing interviews, presumably because they wanted to school her up first.
Expecting her to look great at all times, wow the folks at the meet and greets, and deliver speeches written by other people, looks to be demeaning of women (or this woman in particular) rather than affirming.
It makes my worry about the texture of my after-match hockey scones from the unfamiliar motel oven seem almost liberated.
Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
