Columnist Susan Snyder: We have yet to reach our peak

Friday, March 29, 2002 | 3:26 a.m.

This isn't about bunnies, the promise of spring or risen deities.

But it is about hope.

Today marks the last day of National Women's History Month. I avoided mentioning the national designation in earlier columns, choosing instead to feature some young ladies who are beginning to make history rather than women who had made theirs and passed on.

We learned of Holly Walker, a Green Valley 14-year-old who has founded a nonprofit group to help sick children and has become a community leader before she has even earned a driver's license.

We sold cookies with members of Girl Scout Brownie Troop 224, who will grow into the leaders of tomorrow with what this 90-year-old organization teaches today.

And we learned more about living with diabetes from 5-year-old Madison O'Neil than we'll ever learn from a pamphlet.

You never know where such little girls will go as women.

This week five former little girls boarded an airplane for Nepal, where they will attempt to climb Mount Everest. If they succeed, they will be the first all-American women's team to stand atop the world's highest point at 29,035 feet.

What's the big deal? Only the little kid who wasn't allowed inside big brother's treehouse can fully understand what it means to finally scale that ladder.

More rungs are available now, thanks to the little girls who became the women of the WNBA, the U.S. women's soccer team that won the World Cup in 1999, the U.S. women's Olympic softball team that won gold in 2000, and the U.S. woman cyclist who took the silver that same year.

I remember shooting up out of my chair while watching the 2000 Summer Games to cheer for a female bicyclist from the Netherlands who was, at that moment, trouncing the Spandex off the U.S. rider in the road race.

It didn't matter who won the medal. We all won the race. Women's bicycle racing was on TV, and it wasn't at 2 a.m. Finally, there was somebody there to cheer for -- somebody who looked more like me than Lance Armstrong.

The five American women who could make their first summit attempt by May 10 look like a lot of us. They are 35 to 58 years old. One is a five-year breast cancer survivor. Another has overcome a congenital heart condition. A third is new mother.

They are wives and mommies. One is engaged. One is a grandmother. A few weeks ago they were pushing carts around the supermarket.

Just like we do.

That matters.

It matters that little girls see women in Supreme Court justices' robes, police officers' uniforms and firefighting bunker gear. It matters that they see women's names on the office doors of university presidents and bank presidents.

It matters because after decades of suffrage, bra-burning and soccer-mom backlash, we still haven't seen a woman sitting in the Oval Office behind a desk that belongs to her instead of her husband.

She's out there, somewhere. Someone's little girl is waiting to become Madam President. We don't have her yet.

Today, we have Everest.

And always, hope.