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Four years ago, my three young children and I danced into Election Day. It was a crisp, sunny morning in Evanston, Illinois, and by the time the kids were eating their second breakfast, we were already celebrating that our nation would elect its first female president by nightfall.
I had shucked aside my usual at-home uniform of threadbare jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt, selecting a bright red power pantsuit instead.
“Mommy, are you working today?” my 9-year-old asked. “I thought it was a stay-at-home day.”
“I’m wearing a pantsuit in honor of Hillary Clinton. Women around the country are dressing in their pantsuits to go vote.” My husband snapped grinning photos of me and the three kids.
Our family anticipated a festive evening—baking two giant cookie cakes, one in the shape of an “H”, the other a lumpy “C”—and we laid them out on the counter to save for dessert.
Victory seemed a certainty. Buoyed by Nate Silver’s polling predictions, protected from reality by the liberal Facebook echo chamber in which I lived, it never occurred to me that Trump might actually pull off an upset.
The evening unfolded with sickening silence; each television news update sucked more air from our house. My middle child started to cry.
“I don’t understand what is happening. I don’t know what this means. You said he doesn’t treat all people the same. Why did so many people vote for him? Why don’t they care?” Such a simple assessment; it cut through me; the blunt childish truth that has ravaged our country.
It is four years later, and Election Day is Tuesday. There will be no pantsuits and cookie cakes for us this time. The stakes are infinitely higher now. Our country is in pain, full of Americans that can’t breathe.
They can’t breathe because their lungs are drowning in fluid from COVID19; they can’t breathe because the knees of police officers indoctrinated under systemic racism are crushing their throats; they can’t breathe because the smoke from untamed fires smothers them in the ashes of the homes they built.
Facebook shows me memories from November of 2016—the pantsuit pictures with my children, the H and C cookies that lay uneaten on our counter. It seems a lifetime ago.
I am not dancing to the polls this year. It is a march, a long climb of determination and hope and resistance. It is an acknowledgment of all the ways that privilege protects some. White privilege, cis privilege, economic privilege—inequalities that have always existed in our country but have moved to the forefront of the nation’s consciousness in an explosion of violence and sickness that refuses to be denied.
Our family’s situation has changed, as have so many. One of my children—a dancing little girl with long brown curls four years ago—came out to us as trans in 2019, and with our child’s transition, our dinner-time discussions of the election have taken on a new urgency.
A new name, new cropped hair—and newly threatened rights—define my teenager. Last week, a now-familiar feeling of dread settled over our family as we learned of the Senate’s confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett.
I wept for my trans child. I wept for my LGBTQ friends and loved ones. The willful cognitive dissonance of being pro-life while then failing to protect the rights of those same babies as they grow into wonderfully diverse adult human beings is astonishing. I wept for our country. It was a dark day.
But there is no time for despair. I look at those who have suffered the most and the longest—Black Americans, weighed down by over four hundred years of beatings, racist policies, prejudice, and losses—and I see the resilience of a spirit that triumphs. I am inspired by the way I see Black parents flock to the polls, choosing hope for their children again and again and again, and I will do the same.
Choosing hope means celebrating the strength and culture and accomplishments of marginalized communities. It means reading glorious books by Black authors, trans authors, and immigrant authors. It means shopping in stores and supporting restaurants from all different kinds of people. And, as parents, choosing hope means getting back to the work of raising humans.
As so many parents have experienced, it is terrifying to watch your child launch into a world where those in power hate what your child represents. There are people disgusted by your child’s very existence because it is different from what they were taught is good and pure and valued.
How does one overcome this?
We vote. We move away from individual power and focus instead on the power of communities. Whereas Trump has unleashed terrible attitudes and policies in this country, he did not act alone. Elected Republicans enabled him and supported him down a slippery slope where they clung to their individual needs above what was best for the country.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the fumbling response to COVID19. Our nation’s children—including my three—are unable to attend their public schools because those in power chose to preserve the right of individuals to drink unmasked in bars over the right of children to be educated in person.
Joe Biden, if elected, will not be a savior. It will be the collective efforts of whole communities that slowly chip away at the harms of this administration. Parents who can see past “my child” to “all children” and companies that can see past “my current bottom line” to the “long term sustainable bottom line of our economy.”
This will mean reshaping the boards of companies and PTAs and nonprofits to reflect a broader range of Americans. More women and BIPOC and LGBTQ board members, more immigrants, and more people whose kids attend their local public schools. Accountability for results, willingness to rake risks—pushing against the fragile walls of your bubble until it explodes, leaving a big mess so that you can scrub away the grime and start afresh.
When my three children ask what is on the ballot, I am answering differently this time. Last time, I was mostly focused on teaching them about feminism and misogyny, and equality in general.
Four years later, I am telling them that the vote is about the ability for America to thrive as a nation. It is about intersectional feminism, privilege, and racism. It is about climate change, the economy, coronavirus, and access to unbiased health care for women and BIPOC. Our country is voting on victim-blaming and restorative practices, the criminal justice system, and the opioid epidemic.
Empathy is on the ballot, as is compassion. This election is about mental health, dismantling systemic bias, and the future of public school.
And, for our family, it is now also about the future rights of our beloved trans child, as part of the LGBTQ community, to choose who they want to marry, how they want to build a family, and where they want to work. When my husband and I adopted a child, the biggest thing standing in the way was being Jewish, since many adoption agencies are faith-based.
For my trans child, the biggest thing standing in the way of a future adoption is the U.S. Supreme Court, a far more formidable obstacle.
There will be no pantsuits or cookies this election day, no early celebrating, no carefree photos. We will just be a family choosing hope, not just for our own kids, but for your kids, too.
