Tomorrow, November 8, isn’t just Election Day. It would have been my parents’ 58th wedding anniversary, if Dad hadn’t passed away in July. And so the Universe shifts just a little, because for the first time since 1958, my Democrat Mom’s vote will not be cancelled out by that of her Republican husband.
Actually, there’s no way my dad would have voted for Trump. Dad was one of those reasonable, socially liberal but financially conservative Republican types who felt adrift from his party in the last years. Trump is exactly the kind of bullshitting shyster that my dad loathed. He is not “good people” as my dad defined that sobriquet: someone who is honest, hardworking, and just generally not a dick. My brother and I think Dad would have written someone in. Possibly our sister.
So maybe Mom and Dad wouldn’t have cancelled each out on this anniversary/election day after all. But there’s something sort of heartrendingly poetic about Mom voting alone for the first time that one of the presidential candidates is a woman. Mom is one of three sisters, and she raised two daughters and has four granddaughters. She grew up in the town where Susan B. Anthony lived and was buried. Hillary was her state senator, and Mom actually met her once at a luncheon that my sister took her to at the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, NY (you see why my sister deserves that write-in vote.) It was in Seneca Falls, one hundred and ten years before my parents got married, that Susan B. led the call for the Declaration of Sentiments, demanding that women be given the right to vote.
My parents didn’t see eye to eye on politics. But they stayed together for 57 years, because there was so much more to them than their political affiliations. They listened and they compromised (most of the time.)
Tomorrow has the potential to be a really sad day, for a lot of reasons.
But I have faith we’ll give Mom a good reason to smile.
This is my mom’s favorite song by her favorite singer so here it is, lady.
