Dad keeps telling us she had a good day.
November 9, 2016 was a day that will live in infamy for people of a certain disposition. Many members of our family are of that disposition. She was of that disposition. November 9th was when it became real because the final nail wasn’t in the coffin until late in the evening of the 8th PST. I know because I watched.
I was teaching chemistry at a community college. I was a relatively new teacher who didn’t even think to include election day in my calculation of when to schedule my semester’s exams when I finalized my syllabus in early August. That morning, as deflated as I felt, I rushed to the campus bakery where the culinary arts students practice their craft and cleaned them out of pastries to soften the blow of taking an exam the day after many of my students had voted in their first presidential election.
I had never received so many emails the night before an exam, students begging me to postpone as they felt devastated by the seemingly inevitable result. I carted out my patented line that I set the exam dates at the beginning of the semester, can’t deviate as it is a contract with my students blah blah blah. Through my grief, it felt anemic. I stayed up until midnight drafting the exam acknowledging my heart was hardly in it as the camera spanned glass room full of tearful devastated women waiting for a concession speech that would not come.
My students couldn’t understand why I was doing this to them. I looked at them, and I said, “You have been preparing for this exam longer than one night. And I am still giving this to you because we will need you. We will need people who value and can analyze data to help our country build a sustainable future.” And I meant every word. And now in retrospect, I may have never been so prescient.
I don’t really remember what happened between proctoring that exam and the call. I just know about an hour before I was to drive to pick up my daughter, mom called and asked if I was sitting down. I sat. A day I thought was already pretty miserable immediately came crashing in around me. I sobbed uncontrollably in what I think you would describe it as a panic attack. I can’t say for sure. I can only with certainty say I temporarily lost the ability to control the sadness that overwhelmed me. After what seemed like an eternity but was probably only 30 minutes or so, I pulled it together to go pick up my daughter from daycare.
I clutched her, smelling her hair, holding the one thing I knew to be true, blameless, pure, and hopeful on that day in the world. I held her with the weight of knowing she will be my legacy, our legacy, a standard bearer for liberated, powerful women. She was 1.5. Someone so small shouldn’t have had to be the primary hope for someone as adult as me. I try consciously every day to raise her to care, to love, to wonder, to think, to smile, to question, to encourage, to listen, to love. I try every day in every way to help her be the change I want to see in this country. It feels like an approachable scale.
The issues the country faces as it struggles to reconcile the hard fought progress for racial equality with the white resentment those gains fomented now unleashed and legitimized by his administration are incontrovertible. But the public evil might just be necessary as a means of healing. It is like a bandaid has been swiftly removed from a festering wound. Only with contact with air will the wound truly seal and begin to heal.
But while the national healing begins, I hurt. My neighbors hurt. My country hurts. I yearn for her embrace, her guidance, her wisdom. But she is gone. And I clutch the lessons she delivered, the memories we shared. My family is her legacy. The perspectives we share are echoes of her, exploration into self awareness, family identity, and national promise.
Please join our journey through this new uncomfortable reality in which my sister and I search for meaning, direction, and opportunity following what we both view as a seismic shift in the fabric of our family, our country, and our world. We don’t always agree, and you won’t always agree with us, but we hope we model her faith in humanity, her love for her fellow man, and her progressive vision and that our message resonates with those who my have dissonant opinions.