The query that made Clinton misty

WASHINGTON — It was such a girlish question, Marianne Pernold Young wasn't sure she should ask it.

There she was, within touching distance of Hillary Rodham Clinton at a little New Hampshire coffee shop — and the only thing she could think to ask was: How do you do it?

The microphone came her way once, and Pernold Young handed it off. Too bush league, she thought. But then something inside the 64-year-old freelance photographer and three-year breast-cancer survivor said "what the heck."

So when the microphone came around one last time, she asked the question that helped to steady the listing campaign of the first woman with a real shot at the White House:

"As a woman, I know it's hard to get out of the house and get ready. My question is very personal: How do you do it?"

For all the grilling by the news media, Clinton's response to that one girlish question was what the Clinton high command later would call a eureka moment, eliciting a glimpse of humanity from the famously self-controlled senator from New York.

For the first time that morning, Clinton struggled for words.

Pernold Young jumped to her rescue, the way a girlfriend might: "Who does your hair?"

"Luckily, on special days I do have help," Clinton allowed. "If you see me every day, and if you look on some of the Web sites and listen to some of the commentators, they always find me on the day I didn't have help."

There wasn't a woman in the place who didn't relate to that — the former first lady has bad-hair days, too! But this line of inquiry seemed to touch something in Clinton.

"It's not easy, it's not easy," she went on. "And I couldn't do it if I just didn't passionately believe it was the right thing to do." She paused, collecting her thoughts.

"You know, I have so many opportunities from this country, and I just don't want to see us fall backwards," she said softly, her eyes glistening, her voice starting to break.

"Some people think elections are a game, they think it's like 'who's up' or 'who's down,' " she continued. "It's about our country, it's about our kids' futures, it's really about all of us, together."

"It's amazing how one compassionate sentence could cause such a ripple. It's just mind-boggling," Pernold Young said Wednesday from her home in Portsmouth.

She had been invited by a friend to join about 15 other undecided female voters at the Cafe Espresso in Portsmouth at 9 a.m. Monday. Amid the rhetoric, Pernold Young came up with her question.

"I wasn't going to ask it, because every time I thought of it, my heart would pound," she said. "Why would she want to deal with something like this? It's too girly."

Then again, the girlish stuff helps sustain Pernold Young, from her book club and morning talks over coffee to Breast Friends, her group of breast-cancer survivors.

She was as surprised by Clinton's response as anyone.

Immediately, reporters wanted to know if Pernold Young was a plant. (The Clinton camp had been accused of such antics before.) She assured them she wasn't.

She has attended a number of political events — hugging John Edwards and getting her picture in the paper with Barack Obama, whose oratory had brought her to tears only two days before.

Pernold Young later said she admired Clinton and was delighted to have evoked a side of the candidate that could "help her with future press conferences and rallies."

But she did notice that after the famous question was answered, Clinton "turned to the right and went right into political rhetoric again."

Which is why, the next day, Pernold Young cast her vote for Obama.