Dear Finn:
You are sleeping, now, curled on your side–a crumpled fern waiting to unfurl. You have an already-worn sock monkey in one hand and a stuffed dog in the other. This is what you know.
Here is what I know: tonight, we have failed you.
I had so hoped that, as a boy with two moms, the first president you’d know would be a strong, capable women. I had hoped that, for just a little while longer, you would be shielded from the kind of hatred and anger that is, we now know, so pervasive in our country. I had hoped for you to have leaders who legitimize–not antagonize–our family. I had so hoped.
Instead, tonight, our country has legitimized bigotry, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and misogyny. And, as your Momma, I will have to figure out a way explain this to you. Not tomorrow, of course. Probably not next year, either. But the day will come when I will have to tell you that, yes, sometimes the bad guy wins.
I’ll have to tell you this because you are a mixed race baby born into a same-sex family, because one of your mothers is brown, because the other is Jewish, and because we don’t have the luxury of pretending that these sorts of decisions don’t come with very real consequences. You will see and sense these consequences, I’m afraid. The reverberations of this decision will reach you, and I won’t be able to save you, as much as I wish I could.
So many moms won’t be able to save their babies from this, as much as they all wish that they could.
Yet, I will, I’m sure, muster the impossible strength to do what all moms must do: find a way to make the wolf look a little less scary. Remind you that though there is darkness, there is also light. Help you become strong enough to face a sometimes-ugly, often-scary world with grace and compassion and love. I will be there with you, through all of this, always.
But tonight, I’m having a hard time conjuring any fairytales. Tonight, I know that we should have done better by you.
You don’t know that yet, luckily, but I do.
Always and always and always,
Momma
