An election day conversation with my five year old daughter

Mornings are a treasured time for my oldest daughter Marin and me. She takes twenty minutes to eat a cup of yogurt, and I stand on the opposite side of the counter, packing her lunch for Kindergarten, and we talk. Sometimes we talk about five-year-old things: "Mom, do you think there aren't unicorns any more because they were all living on Hawaii when the volcano erupted?" (where she comes up with these things, I have no idea, but damn I'm proud.) Sometimes we talk about more serious things, like how it's going with a classmate who pushes her around.

Today is election day, and I thought I'd fail as a parent if I didn't at least mention it, especially with a woman as a major party nomination. Whether you're #withher or not, this reality is pretty spectacular, as not too long ago women weren't allowed to cast a vote for an elected official, much less become one.

So I brought it up.

Me: Guess what today is honey? It's election day, which means our country is going to pick a new president.

Marin: What does a president do?

Me: Well, let's pretend your school is the whole country. The principal would be like the president. The teachers would come up with ideas for new rules, and if most of the teachers liked the rule, they would ask the principal if they could make those rules real for the students, and the principal would say yes or no.

Marin: Is my principal going to be the president?

Me: Well, no. It's just an example. But today is the first time that a woman is a choice for president.

Marin: My principal is a woman.

Me: that's true. We've never had a woman president before, though.

Marin: why not?

Me: well....

And then I stopped. How much can a five year old understand? And how much can I tell her without some really tough follow-up questions.

We haven't had a female president because not too long ago women couldn't even vote, or file charges against their spouse if the stick used to strike them was thinner than his thumb, or go to college, or expected to be anything outside the home.

Because women used to be considered lesser than by the majority.

Because in a lot of ways, we still are.

But my five year old doesn't know that. She thinks it's strange we're celebrating the fact that a woman is a major party nomination - because why couldn't a woman be a major party nomination? Why wouldn't my daughter have just as much an opportunity and expectation than the boy she sits next to in kindergarten to be whatever she wanted. To introduce the idea that this is a big deal because we as a country have had some serious hiccups in our commitment to "liberty and justice for all" also introduces the concept that women have been and are still considered less by some. That's a heady thing for a five year old.

I thought for a second, and tried again.

Me: It's exciting because it's the first time we've had a woman to vote for. And you know how the first time for new things is pretty exciting? Like the first time you rode your horse all by yourself? That was pretty exciting, right?

Marin: Yeah! Can I ride her after school today.

Me: Sure.

Marin: Hey mom, if it's this exciting, our silly country shouldn't have waited so long.

Me: You're right about that.

Personally, I'm not a Hillary Clinton fan. I felt the Bern - and was very sad when he lost the nomination. But Trump terrifies me as a woman, a mother, and a citizen of this country, which is already struggling with a divisive culture in many ways. Trump's more aggressive followers make me more nervous to be a woman out in public than maybe ever in my life. People are campaigning for him to lead the free world, when he has bragged about violating women, spewed fear speech regarding whole populations of people, and a host of other scarily familiar tactics a loud, white man used to rally a group of frustrated people. And almost every day since the nominations were decided, I wonder how we got here, how the majority of the Republican party chose this man, listened to his hateful nonsense and said that's our guy, or stood aside and let it happen. More than the idea of Trump as president, the fact that he has such a large fan base in this country scares me. Please, please don't vote for HIM just because you don't like HER. You'd be railing against one establishment to the benefit of another.

Likewise, I wouldn't vote for a woman just because she's a woman, and in fact I didn't vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. (Yes, I did vote.) Still, seeing a woman's name on the ballot made me teary with pride, and with hope for my daughters' future as American women. I can appreciate this milestone, even if I don't appreciate the candidate.

p.s.

GO VOTE

Augusta Literary Festival - AKA my first attempt to travel with two kids

I'd like to start this post with a little diddy about how my experience at the Augusta Literary Festival concluded. The festival was drawing to a close. My husband was holding our 4 month old baby with one hand and helping me pack away odds and ends with the other. My 4 year old daughter was helping herself to leftover candy. She looked up at me and said: "Momma, why does one of your earrings have a hole in it and the other one doesn't?" I figured one of the earrings - dangly loopy silvery things - had become hooked on itself some kind of way. I reached up to feel for both. I was wearing two completely different earrings, and had been All. Day. Long. And that, in a nutshell, is what it's like to tour with small children in tow. Hey, at least they were both silver. (Can you spot the difference in the picture at the end of this post?)

A more extended version of events:

We arrived in Augusta on Thursday night. I checked in with the front desk at the hotel and then shuttled my sleeping children from the car to the room using half-ninja-half-mama-grizzly tactics to scare would-be noise away. My four year old slept between my husband and I on a king size bed, some how turning perpendicular, where-upon she began making snow-angels in her sleep.

On Friday I was scheduled to attend a round panel discussion with the other four finalist for the Frank Yerby Award for Fiction. We asked Siri how to get there. Dear Siri sent us to the wrong place five times, after which I spied the little yellow house I saw on the festival website, told my husband to stop the car in the middle of the road, leaped out, and ran to the front door. There was a piece of paper on the door. That's never a good thing, never: congratulations, you found the right place! And this was no exception. The panel had been moved to a different building. I had the name but no map and not the foggiest idea of how to get from here to there.

Then an angel appeared: a woman in her car called out to me (I don't know if I was radiating desperation or just looked really, utterly lost). She was part of the award panel and told me where the discussion had been moved to. I thanked my lucky stars I'd opted to wear boots instead of heels, and ran across a field and three parking lots, arriving at the panel sweaty, but on time.

The panel discussion was freaking amazing. There's really no other way to describe it. We clicked and bantered and dove in and swam around. We challenged each other. We supported each other. I would do it once a week if I could. This is where I first met fellow writers Amanda Kyle Williams, C. Michael Forsyth, and Kimberly Teter. Meeting these people made the entire trip worth it, and the festival hadn't started yet.

Amanda Kyle Williams won the Yerby Award - and she absolutely deserved it. She is witty and razor-sharp. Her book - Don't Talk to Strangers - is book three in her Keye Street series. I'm reading book #1 - The Stranger You Seek - right now, (because I'm one of those OCD types that has to read series books in order even if they're all stand-alone) and it has the most chilling opening I have ever read. Hands down. No contest. Put it on your to-read list right now. Right. Now.

Me, I'm happy to be a finalist, to have earned some bling for the Moonlit cover, to be counted among heavy-hitting company, and to own all three of Amanda's books. Signed. Boom.

While I was at the award ceremony, my husband took our girls to Outback to attempt dinner single-parent style. He was brave, and he went down fighting, but that ship sank hard, fast, and loud. He wound up tossing dinner in to-go boxes and wrangling our tiny circus back to the car as fast as possible. Once I came back, I helped him get both girls asleep, and then ate my dinner perched on the hotel toilet so I wouldn't wake our baby, who bursts to waking at the slightest sound. Proof positive mashed potatoes are the bees knees - no matter what temperature they are or where you are when you eat them. Bonus: they're super quiet to chew.
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At last - Saturday - the actual Literary Festival portion of events. The venue was beautiful, the organization spot-on, and the support was fantastic. Writers, if you have a chance to attend this festival, I highly recommend it. The 2015 group of authors was one of the most interesting, engaging, benevolent group of people I've been a part of. Aren't we a snazzy group?

And then came time to pack up, and my daughter pointed out my earrings, and I was so freaking tired, and still kind of giddy that Amanda Kyle Williams stopped by my table and snagged a piece of chocolate and laughed at my one-liner, that I shrugged and kept packing. At least I have big hair. Earrings are more like a glimmer, an after thought, a peekaboo behind a curtain of brownish. Like I said, at least they were both silver.