A Letter. Inauguration Day.

…What rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

from “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats

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My Darlings,

Today is 20 January, 2017. Your mom made oatmeal. We read the Space Child’s Mother Goose.

Henry, you wanted to know about Saturn’s rings, and when your sister cried out for lack of attention, you trilled your tongue to make your dinosaur sound until she laughed.

Nellie, you’re watching everything with those big blue eyes like a little owl in the most interesting thicket in the world.

I adore your curiosity, both of you, but on this day of all days I wish you wouldn’t linger so long on me as I check my phone for news. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I could swear you understood completely when you watched your mother scroll the headlines and slam her computer closed too hard.

Last year, your mom and I cried twice, each. We both cried when you, Nellie, came into the world. That cry was a sort of exhalation that every parent feels—a mixture of joy and relief—when their child is born and everything’s in the clear. The right thing happened that day.

Your mom cried on the 28th of July, as she watched a strong, smart, hard-working woman accept the nomination of the Democratic Party to be President of the United States. She later told me she hadn’t let herself believe it was even possible until that moment. This, too, was a sort of exhalation, and it was one shared by many women around the world. The right thing happened that day, too.

I cried the night of November 8th. That was opposite in almost every way. It was an inhalation. My guts got tense as I prepared to fight for my family and its future. I thought of you, my children, because I saw the universe rend in two and our minds and bodies get flung in the wrong direction, into Earth-2, the Upside Down, into Wonderland. And like Alice, I was as afraid then as I am now that the Jabberwock would menace our contented little life and spoil everything your mother and I had built up and fought for for many years.

I cried thinking of Donald Trump, that ignorant bully, being the first idea my daughter would have of a President of the United States instead of a competent woman.

I cried thinking of my grandfather, who went to Italy to fight fascists and buy with his blood the right for his children to democratically elect one.

I cried thinking of you, and how on Earth I would navigate the inevitable day when that perfect, curious question, Why, left your lips, and I would be forced to explain who that man is, and how he got there, and what our country did on the 8th of November, 2016.

The wrong thing happened that day.

Your mother asked me why I was so upset. Beneath her question I could already see her steel herself away, clench her jaw like I imagine so many strong women forever have when events didn’t break their way. I felt a billion years of strong women clear their throat, force a smile, and ask me that question.

Because I said, I can’t figure out how we raise our children in a world where this is an acceptable outcome.

She stared at the wall as if someone were writing out a message for her, longhand. When I thought she wasn’t going to reply at all, she turned back to me and said simply We’re going to teach them what we stand for, and they will see for themselves why this isn’t an acceptable outcome.

We stand for Curiosity, Honesty, and Empathy. These three virtues form the foundation of our world view and will be constantly reinforced in our home.

If I could grab you by the shoulders and stare into your eyes and have you understand this, I would say: go out and meet the people of this world. Let your curiosity lead you to them, let your honesty assess them, and let your empathy open your ears to their stories. There will be more variety and color and beauty and anguish in them than you can imagine.

If you don’t do this, you will only ever know people like your mother and me. Your mind and heart will become malnourished if they only ever encounter one kind of person. And as delightful and eccentric as your mother and I think we are, we occupy the smallest corner of an explosion of life.

If you do this, you will change. There is an expansionary effect to listening to people. The stories of others mixed with my own have made me who I am. But I had to learn to listen. I am still not very good at it.

When you stop to listen, you will find the voices right in front of you. Everywhere there are people, there are quiet hardships being borne.

I had to learn to listen when your uncle told me he was gay, and that he was so afraid to tell the rest of our family that he had made himself sick. I had to learn to listen when my cousin fell into the pit of heroin abuse. I had to listen when your mother told me she was pregnant with you, and that she was scared we wouldn’t be able to give you everything you need.

You listen when you don’t want to: when a friend’s brother has overdosed and died in a shitty motel room; when someone you love has been sexually assaulted because they were too drunk at a party and didn’t account for a night of trauma when they were getting ready to go out; when a bespectacled old lady speaks of her earliest childhood memory — a yellow felt star pinned to her winter coat.

You listen to a friend who is choosing to have an abortion just as completely as you listen to friends who feel desolate and hollow because they can’t conceive a child in the first place.

You listen to the words when they come to you from pink lips or purple-black or brown. You leave your mouth agape at incredible adventures. You shed tears when the words quiver and their deliverer’s voice cracks.

You haven’t heard these stories. I will tell some of them to you in time. Others, I will let fade into the background pattern of my mind. The only thing that gives me more humility than these stories is the certainty that I will hear more in my future. I will meet more people who have known and overcome pain and hardship, to an extent that will stretch me and make me more open, more kind, and more sensitive to the realities of others around me.

Curiosity, Honesty, and Empathy. These are what we stand for as a family. These are what we will teach and reinforce every chance we get in these coming years. And now you have more context for why your mother and I are devastated today and have been for months. We’ve been watching our country reject what we stand for, and we fear for our ability to keep the embers of curiosity, honesty, and empathy glowing and warm in our home.

Today is 20 January, 2017, and our new President practices the opposite of these three virtues. He stands in stark contrast to everything we wish to teach you. He projects Willful Ignorance, Opportunistic Confusion, and Blind Narcissism into the world.

Today is a sad day. But we will be here tomorrow. And we will work without stopping to raise you with a strong foundation and to protest what he stands for.

There’s so much more I want to say now. I want to speak to you about the virtue of Autonomy, of the staggering power of Community, of great and flawed role models, of science’s centrality to our way of life, of fascinating phenomena of the human mind and the natural world.

We will speak of these things in time. Today we must focus on the man who takes his oath today. We must hold fast to the truth, because it will buckle and bend in these coming years. We must ferociously defend our curiosity. We must propel honesty out from us like an unstoppable wave. And we must, always, listen to the inner world of others with an open and empathic heart.

Love,
Dad