My daughter Lily’s tear-streaked face fills my phone’s screen after I punch the “join” button for FaceTime.
“I’m really sad,” she says.
The distress in her voice is palpable and her eyes, puffy from sleep and crying, carry the disbelief that I feel. It’s 7:15 a.m. on November 6, and she’s calling from her student apartment in Canada where she’s in her last year at the University of Toronto. I slow my walking pace so that I can juggle my phone along with our chocolate Lab Dewey’s leash and give her my attention.
“I know,” I say. “Me too.” Tears burn behind my eyes. Ten minutes earlier, after a sleepless night, I’d dragged myself out the door to release some of the anxiety that had been circulating through my body since the election returns began telling the grim story of this morning’s reality. I needed to get away from the TV and its pundits’ efforts to rationalize. As Dewey and I started our trek through the familiar streets of our New Hampshire neighborhood, I’d averted my eyes from the defiant lawn signs still littering so many yards so I wouldn’t let my thoughts about the neighbors who occupied the houses to which they belonged grow too bleak.
“What do we do now?” Lily asks. It’s the same question I asked my husband as he left for school this morning. His pragmatic, “We ride it out,”— his own effort, I know, to stifle the anger surging through his veins so he can face his high school students with his characteristic composure— wasn’t particularly comforting to me, so I’m not about to pass it on.
“I really don’t know, Lil,” I say. I want to have a better answer for her. I want to push back against her sadness and fear with reassurances that it will all be okay. I want to tell her that this heaviness we feel is temporary. Our disappointment in the more than half the country, including friends and family, who inconceivably sidestepped the blatant moral failings; felony convictions; racist, sexist, homophobic, and vulgar rhetoric of a known-to-be-dangerous-to-not-just-the-country-but-to-the-world candidate because he promised to make groceries cheaper, protect their guns, or defend against the “dark forces,” will dissipate.
I can’t.
Right now, I don’t think it will all be okay. Right now, I’m struggling to keep at bay the bleak thoughts—the resentful ones that have the potential to turn me into a kind of vilifying person I never want to be. Right now, I’m desperate to tell my daughter to stay put, shelter for the long-term in Canada where she is also a citizen because I am a Canadian citizen. A place where her reproductive freedoms aren’t under threat. Where her Jewish American boyfriend doesn’t have to wonder about the trickledown effect of antisemitism from a president who regularly consorts with White Nationalists. Where climate and education are priorities, and her healthcare is guaranteed. Right now, I’m seriously contemplating the escape routes that my Canadian citizenship offers me.
Down the road, we’ll have roles to play to help in that sheltering. We’ll do our best to stand with those who need us. But first, we need to steady our own footing.
But the truth is that I’m not who actually needs an escape route. And Lily isn’t who actually needs the sheltering. We are disheartened and scared about the overall portrait of the different America that we live in this morning, but there’s no immediate threat to our lives today. No dramatic shifts we will see in our here and now. We live in the Northeast. Our state and the ones adjacent to it are blue. Even though New Hampshire elected a Republican governor, she’s a moderate. We are cisgender, white, upper-middle class. Yes, I’m an immigrant, but because I look and speak so-called “American,” no one is conspiring to kick me out.
Today, the people I know and love in the LGBTQ+ community whose basic human rights are in jeopardy need sheltering. My BIPOC and AAPI friends who understand how divisive discourse emboldens bigots need sheltering. The women who get pregnant or face infertility in states where new and impending laws limit their access to reproductive healthcare need sheltering. The communities facing ongoing weather threats resulting from environmental changes that this president denies need sheltering. Victims of sexual assault and domestic violence who no longer feel safeguarded need sheltering. People with disabilities who know a man who can mock them publicly can also slash their rights, protections, and basic services need sheltering. Immigrants and refugees who sought asylum within these borders and now fear being sent back to war zones need sheltering. Down the road, we’ll have roles to play to help in that sheltering. We’ll do our best to stand with those who need us. But first, we need to steady our own footing.
“A lot of people we know are grieving today,” I say to Lily. Maybe that’s the part I can reassure her about. For just under half of this country, it’s a sad day. A day where something—whether it’s hope for the future, belief in the good in people, confidence in our democratic systems—has been lost. In the days ahead, I will listen to friends’ stories of sobbing in public places, neglecting their work, taking to their beds. The weight of it will feel crushing. But my experiences with grief will also remind me that there’s comfort in acknowledging and facing loss together.
“You don’t have to do anything else for now, Lil,” I say as Dewey and I pause at a crosswalk and wait for the passing cars to slow. “Maybe being sad is it. It’s okay to be sad for you, and to be sad for the people around you, too.”
“Alright,” she says. Her eyes are still red, but her tears have stopped.
“I love you,” I say, pulling that one feeling close, hoping it can push back against the others still churning.
“I love you too,” she says before disconnecting. In the silence after the call, I do the only thing I can do right now too. Steadying my footing as best I can, I step forward and keep going.
Melanie Brooks is the author of A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all and Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma.
