She got me at the introductory video, before she ever set foot on stage. All those women, generations of us, races of us, ages of us; all those marches, and rallies, and speeches, and demonstrations. All that work, that hard, hard work, filled with fury and frustration, over all these many, many years. To get the vote. To get equal rights. To get to be whatever we dreamed of being.

Our history, as liberated women, is so short, but it feels so painfully long. And then Hillary appeared, making her way to take command of that podium, looking as joyful and comfortable as I have ever seen her, under that glittering glass ceiling in Brooklyn — cracking it wide open, claiming that nomination as the first woman to represent a major political party, so that we may say to our daughters: But of course you can run for president.

There have been times, during both of Hillary’s campaigns for the presidency, when I’ve felt as if I’ve been trapped in that familiar nightmare that haunts our collective unconscious. The one where you’re running and running and running, your heart pounding, your lungs exploding — and you are not moving.

That was the feeling when Hillary had to cede the race to Barack Obama: No matter how hard we tried, women were frozen in place. I wept in disappointment at her gracious withdrawal, but then, given a different gift of healing, wept with pride and pleasure at the inauguration of the country’s first African-American president. And yet. My inbox hasn’t been filling with those “can you believe — isn’t this thrilling?” notes I would have expected.

The responses of many of my friends and family have been tepid at best. One young man I work with told me, “We are so exhausted by the cynical, nasty fog of politics that we can’t even recognize a chance for happiness when it is right in front of us.” My 30-year-old son tried to explain it to me, when I told him I was feeling a bit deflated by the general deflation. “Mom, it seems a little late for this to be happening, doesn’t it?” he said. “I mean, it was inevitable, wasn’t it?”

Yes. And no. How could a milestone in American history seem ho-hum? Why are citizens of this great country choosing this particular world historic moment to yawn, whine and shrug their shoulder pads?

Well, I’m sending up hosannas. I still don’t take anything for granted when it comes to advancement in what remains an intractably sexist world. I’ve been on pins and needles about just how far Hillary would get, and I will be worrying right up until Election Day in November.

I sure haven’t been surprised when either of her opponents — male — started hurling new levels of double standards at her. That she isn’t qualified — when her résumé is much, much bigger than any man’s hands. That she’s weak — because her marriage wasn’t destroyed by yet another wandering husband with something to prove about the size of his hands. At the end of the Brooklyn rally, she and Bill clasped each other tightly, and I choked up at the durability of that bond.

I’ve been dismayed, and disgusted, to see how easy it is to be nasty. Pundits marvel at how nothing sticks to Donald Trump, but they neglect to consider that they’re the ones taking the Teflon pan off the burner. Hillary is serious. She requires an attention span. And like Peter Pan, who lost his shadow, we have mislaid our attention spans in a server somewhere. We can’t remember how to find the serious interesting, especially if it comes from a woman’s lips. But maybe we’re the ones with the problem, not Hillary.

Maybe the sense of inevitability comes from knowing Hillary too well. She’s become a stand-in for the archetypal women who frighten and repel us: The woman betrayed. The castrating woman. The cookie woman. The dowdy woman. Right now, some very loud people are not ready for what Hillary really is: the indomitable woman. Barring anything unprecedented, the nominee. Real, and brave. Defying all caricature.

And so we forget to be surprised by Hillary’s achievement. We begrudge her, and ourselves, a few moments to bask. We expect Hillary to do great things. That’s always been the Wellesley girl problem — no one can be surprised by her accomplishments. We expect nothing less. She’s always among the smartest in any room. And so she raises the bar. How exhausting it must be. How demanding we are. Nothing women do is ever really good enough.

I’ve been stunned by some of the pieces I’ve read, by women who were supposed to be her friends. Lacerating, petty, misguided, judgmental and arrogant friends. She isn’t likable, they say. Somehow the mean girls always grab the mike at a party.

Never mind that millions of us not only “like” Hillary, insofar as that means anything, but we are inspired and awed by the years of service she has devoted — to us! Millions of us find in her a model of thoughtfulness, of temperance, of discretion, of intelligence, of diligence and resilience, those most undersung of her sturdy values. She’s a model of sly wit, of compassion and, yes, of integrity. I wish I could spend hours picking her brains about stuff, hard stuff, like how to keep the perfect from becoming the enemy of the good. Or how she raised such a terrific daughter.

I cannot fathom how she finds the energy, much less the fortitude, to still be slogging it out on the campaign trail. It cannot ever have been easy to be Hillary, probably not even back in those days of waking up to Chelsea mornings. But there it is, the hardest lesson I’ve had to learn over the years, the trait we all have to develop to get anywhere in this world. Hillary is tenacity personified. And it is beautiful to behold.

We can’t like Hillary, we can’t know who she is, the guys tell us, because she doesn’t know how to have fun. “What do you do for fun?” is a question millions of women hate, by the way, and it usually comes from men who don’t have a clue about what’s such fun about the things women love doing. Having heart-to-heart talks with old friends, or cuddling a grandchild, or watching the paint dry in the living room, or, yes, actually even having fun at our jobs! Traveling the world! Meeting interesting people!

So I’m celebrating. I would never vote for someone just because she’s a woman. And that’s not what Hillary’s asking me to do, either. To have someone who has spent a lifetime leaning in, and been forced to lean out, too — and has done so without toppling over or even carrying on about it; someone I’ve grown up with but can never take for granted — to have all this in a person who has a shot at being the country’s first female president, and this, after we’ve had our first black president?

Well, if this comes to pass in my lifetime, then our big bulging boom of a generation will have done a few things right. More than a few, actually. We live in amazing times. We are among the luckiest and most privileged women of the world. We may not be roaring, quite yet. We’re too busy knocking wood. But Hillary fatigue? Don’t count on it. I’m just starting to fall in love with her, all over again.