A Letter to My Children

Tuesday morning I'd stood in the booth and wept as I voted for Hillary. I wept at the weight and honor of voting in our first female president. I wept at how I would tell my daughter about this day. I went home and put my sticker on a piece of notebook paper to write her a letter on, to tuck it away and save it for her. I was so sure. I won't write that letter. I still have the notebook paper and I will still write a letter, to both my children, but it will say very different things.

I will tell them about the phone calls I got Tuesday night from a Mexican friend; I will tell them about her hysterical sobs as she talked about her nieces and nephews and her fear for them. I will write about the message I got from a childhood friend, a bisexual woman who is now the mother of a beautiful mixed-race daughter; I'll tell them how she begged me to help her understand how to handle this. I will write in that letter about how my 5th grade teacher accused me of being dishonest, naive, and foolish when I expressed public sympathy for anyone feeling afraid, how she said anyone feeling fear was afraid because of their own illegal actions. I will write to my kids on that letter, with my "I voted" sticker on it and I will tell them about being courageous in the face of fear, being gentle in the face of pain, and I will tell them about being a force for good in the face of injustice. It isn't the letter I wanted to write. This isn't the way this was supposed to go.