“Mamaaaa! Molly isn’t
sharing …”
Lizzy’s wail was interrupted by her twin. “You know what Mommy’s going to say. She’s going to tell us to work it out
ourselves. And listen. And play fair.”
Her parody of middle-aged grouchy exasperation did a fair job of making
a six-year-old’s voice sound… exactly like mine.
Well, not how mine always sounds – at least, I hope not. But it was late afternoon on Election Day,
for heaven’s sake. Weeks of punditting
had pushed me to the point of just leave
Mommy in peace while she stuffs this apple into a lunchbox shaped like a
cartoon owl, ok?
As I slathered garlic cream cheese onto potato bread, it
occurred to me that it might be unreasonable to expect my first-graders to
respect differences of opinion, initiate intelligent and logical discourse, and
broker civil compromises. After all, I wasn’t sure that we grownups -- We The
People, we the red-and-blue electorate of the not-so-United States – had been
doing such a terribly good job at any of those things, lately.
Based on most of my political leanings, I’m a
deep-indigo-blue liberal – not the bleeding-heart kind so much as the
dorky-scientist kind. I wallow in reams
of statistics about the effects of climate change, or the linkages between
education, reproductive rights, and female autonomy. I desperately want America, as the supposed leader of
the free world, to exemplify the same kind of logic, generosity,
level-headedness, and deep compassion that I want from my kids. I want to be governed by teamwork, not divisiveness
– but, of course, as a practically-socialist left-winger, I want those teams to
understand that denying someone education, health care, civil rights, or basic
personal freedoms can never lead to a rich society in any sense of the word. Is that too much to ask, I wondered?
As I doled out peanuts into baggies and listened to
too-early-to-be-useful speculation on NPR, I felt my hopes falter. Were we doomed to squabbles, tantrums,
cookie-jar-grabbing, fingers jammed in ears (“I can’t HEAR you, nyah, nyah!”)
and shrieking matches based on fabricated versions of reality? Was that red and blue map nothing more than
the grownup version of “I wish I never, ever had a twin sister!”
Well, but my kids didn’t always
behave like that, I reminded myself. Indeed, the bickering in the other room had
died down. It often does, these days –
but I still recall my amazement the first time a twin argument (twingument?)
achieved peaceful resolution without parental intervention.
The kids were three at the time, still newbies at preschool,
and still unsure, at home, whether they wanted to behave like locomotives on
separate tracks, or actually interact with one another. In this instance, they were attempting to
play “house” or “families” or some other proto-game that required that their
motley collection of stuffed beasts and humans stand in as offspring. “I want to be the Mommy!” A pause. A second voice, even more irritatingly pitched:
“No, I want to be the Mommy!” Obviously, as I can attest, being the Mommy is
always the most awesomest job ever. Just
as the shrieking told me that I ought to arbitrate, for preservation of intact
juvenile bodily organs if not my nerves… it stopped. “Wait,” said Molly. “Susie* has TWO Mommies!”
Lizzy absorbed this for a couple of seconds, as if the
mental calculus were more than a little taxing.
Then, in tones of joyful, breathless wonder, she concluded, “We can BOTH
be the Mommy!”
Yes, it’s a little-known fact that lesbian preschool-parents
can do wonders for your children’s behavior.
Now, three years later, the kids have absorbed even more of
the diversity in their little orbits.
They know single parents, international adoptees, multi-racial families,
and stay-at-home dads. The doctor, the
dentist, and the school principal are female.
Mommy chops wood and Daddy mops the floor. The President is black. To
them, none of this is “liberal” or freighted with any sort of symbolism. It’s not a statement of redness or
blueness. It’s not remarkable. It’s just… normal.
I put away the lunch boxes for the next day, and tried to
calm my nerves during the kids’ ice skating lesson -- even as polls closed in
the eastern time zones. I was biting my
nails by seven o’clock. Our community
dinner that evening was a cacophony of shouts and laughter alternating with
hushed attention to the radio and to three different internet-connected
devices. And then the results started
to come in.
The kids reveled in the camaraderie while the adults reveled
in the champagne. Molly, as it turned out,
had political opinions about everything from tax policies (“rich people should
pay more!”) to polling practices (“we did Kids’ Voting at school, and we used
computers – why don’t you?”) She went on to explain that she had voted for Obama
because she thought he was a good President, and because she remembered “how
happy everyone was when we got rid of Bush.”
Floored, I pointed out that she had been two years old at the time. “So? I remember everyone at dinner was really
happy,” she insisted. Lizzy claimed to
know nothing of Congress or Presidents. But
when I explained that gay marriage was an issue on the ballot in four different
states, both kids were equally confused.
Wasn’t it already ok?
And, as it turned out – it was. For the first time in American history, gay
marriage was approved not by legal challenges put forth by those with a direct
stake in the issue, but by millions of voters without any stake at all, other
than a sense of fairness, of sharing, of listening and playing fair. And this happened not just in one state, but
in four. No, they weren’t landslide
votes. But they happened.
I recalled, then, the elderly woman who lived up the street
from my family when I was very small. My
big sister, always a history buff, interviewed Mrs. Weaver for a class
project. Sarah was eager to ask
questions about specific events that this woman born in 1884 might recall. How did she feel, for example, when, at the
semi-ancient age of 36, she was finally granted the right to vote?
I can still see the old woman half-shrugging, smiling her
mostly-blind smile, and saying simply, “I went out and voted.”
Sometimes change feels like an epiphany. Often it’s the culmination of years of
struggle, and a victory over years of oppression. For those at the front lines, there is agony
and joy. But at the same time, I
realized on Election Day, change also happens in the background, so quietly
that no naysayers or Tea Partiers can do anything about it.
Most of the Americans who voted for Barack Obama were
white. A whole lot of male-type-folks in
New Hampshire
(with chest-hair! and testosterone!) decided that they wanted to be represented
in D.C. by folks with nary a Y-chromosome among them. And almost a hundred years ago, all of the
people who chose to give women the vote – albeit after decades on hardship and
unremitting work by the suffragettes – were men. We no longer question five-day work weeks or
the concept of “retirement.” Last
century’s Extremely Controversial Liberal Cause is this century’s yawn.
I thought about who, among all my Facebook friends, seems to
post the most messages in favor of gay rights.
The two that sprang to mind are not the most irreligious of my clan, nor
the most politically liberal. In fact, neither is either left- or
right-affiliated. Neither is gay. But, at less than 25 years old, they are the
youngest of the contingent. To them, I
suspect, gay rights are not red or blue or even rainbow-hued. They are just… normal.
Yeah, it may be a long wait, with lots of ups and downs. Yeah, things may sometimes get ugly and
divisive. But, over the long haul, I
think We The People are learning to share… and work it out ourselves… and
listen… and play fair.
*not her real name, but you two mommies know who you are,
and I never DID say thank you…
