To illustrate: I know Hillary Clinton slightly. She and my mother were in the same class at Wellesley, and knew each other in passing. Their acquaintance was rekindled when Chelsea enrolled in my class at Sidwell Friends School in 1993. Chelsea and I were more friendly than friends in high school and the few times we’ve seen each other since. Throughout Chelsea’s four-and-a-half years at Sidwell Hillary came to all of the school functions — back to school night, parents’ night, etc. I was always amazed through high school that Hillary knew all of our names, even kids like me who weren’t that close to her daughter. This was the First Lady of the United States we’re talking about…and she knew my name at a glance! Sure, most of the moms did — and Bill knew everybody’s name because he’s Bill and that’s how he rolls, and because we have the same name, which always helped. She was always ready with a laugh, as much like the other parents as you can be when you’re the First Lady. And she WAS like the other parents: at Chelsea’s birthday party in 9th grade, she and Bill opened up the White House to a bunch of 14 year-olds and handed out popcorn as we went in to see an advance screening of Reality Bites. The setting was surreal — somehow even more so in the retelling twenty years later — but that was part of it: Hillary was different, yet she cared enough to be at her daughter’s events and to be so involved that we didn’t think anything of it.

Toward the end of our senior year, the mother of one of our classmates and a good friend of Chelsea’s died. The mother had been a fixture at the school. Stricken with cancer in her 40s, she defied the odds and lived for nearly a decade, her boundless energy in the face of despair impressing even us callous teenagers. We all went to her funeral, an event I will never forget, not least because my classmate stood and gave a moving eulogy of his mother in front of several hundred people, something I can’t even comprehend as an adult. My father had died when I was ten and each time there was a death that touched the school I felt like I was the expert and should have answers for everyone. I didn’t, of course, but when I went to that funeral that day I remember being a cocky 17 year-old determined to show how tough I was, and doubly-determined not to cry.

I sat down, somewhat uncomfortable in my only suit and struggling to breath with a too-small collar and wearing a tie, something that Quaker school didn’t often demand. I looked up when someone tried to get to the open seats next to me. It was Chelsea, followed by her mother. She sat down next to me and asked how I was; I mumbled something indistinct while trying to figure out why the First Lady was there. There was, of course, no reason she shouldn’t have been there: the mother of her daughter’s good friend had died, and she had come to the funeral. Same with all our mothers. Yet she was there nonetheless.

As soon as my friend rose to eulogize his mother, I started crying. Sobbing really. Full-on nose-running blubbering. As a teenager and a male I had no tissues or handkerchief or anything. Then Hillary touched me on the shoulder. I looked up and saw her eyes were red and tearing, but she had a handkerchief, which she offered to me. I waved it away; she insisted, and I wiped my eyes and, subtly I thought, my nose. She patted me on the shoulder, comforting me as I grieved for my friend’s mother, my friend and, as at every funeral, for my own father. That moment was twenty years ago. Hillary’s kindness made quite an impression.

The whole scene was nothing special. A classmate’s mother comforts a friend of her child at a funeral. But in 1997 Hillary was First Lady. She didn’t have to be there. There wasn’t a political upside to showing up; we were all Democrats anyway. There were no cameras, no press. There was just a community that she and her daughter were a part of, and there was her kind and caring nature. She was there for her daughter and, in the end, for me as well. Just like all the other moms. She went to that funeral that day not because of some calculated political effort, but because she is a mother, a daughter, a human who knows what it is like to lose a loved one, and understands that it is important to show up even when it isn’t convenient or fun. It was a small thing, really, but as she runs for president and is savaged for her apparently calculating nature — as somber pundits and voters alike opine on her inability to “connect” with voters — some insight into the real person is vital. Hillary showed up that day for all the right reasons. She showed up and cried real tears because she cared about the people around her. Remember that the next time someone says she doesn’t connect or she is too robotic or she is always calculating. When it really matters — which is to say those times when no one is looking — she does the right thing simply because she knows it’s right, even when it costs her a handkerchief.