By Monica Hesse / The Washington Post
When Donald Trump won his first election in 2016, I remember two very specific things. The first is that I left The Washington Post’s newsroom just after the race was called at about 2:30 a.m. Halfway home my cabdriver, an immigrant woman, turned off the radio, stopped the car and quietly vomited by the side of the road.
The second thing I remember is that by the time I logged back onto my computer the next day, it felt like everyone online was sharing “Good Bones,” a poem by Maggie Smith about teaching children to search for hope in broken times. “I am trying to sell them the world,” Smith writes in free verse. “Any decent realtor, walking you through a real s***hole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.”
I loved the poem. I hated the people who were posting it just then. Not every devastation needs to be followed immediately with vow to get up, resist, hope. Sometimes you just need to step out of the Hyundai and throw up.
This time it feels much worse. The people who voted for him this time knew exactly what they were getting and decided they wanted more.
In the end, women voted for Harris by about 10 points, according to The Post’s analysis of exit polls, but men voted for Trump by about 10 points; numbers that made the whole campaign season feel like a wash and a hideous prank. American women were voting for their lives and health care; American men were voting for … not that. Something else. I’m too tired to list the names again of the women who died, or almost did, because they were denied lifesaving abortions. I’m too tired to double-check, again, how many women accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct (he’s denied the allegations), or to remind myself of how much money he was ordered to pay E. Jean Carroll after being found legally liable of sexual abusing her in the 1990s. He used his first rally after the polls closed to goad his supporters into calling Nancy Pelosi a “b****.”
Does all of this mean that Kamala Harris’ game wasn’t strong enough? Late Tuesday night, this seemed to be a narrative talking heads were floating on television: She spent too much time talking about how destructive he was, and not enough time talking about her own constructive plans. She didn’t talk to men enough. She didn’t speak the language of her own generation.
Or does it mean something more fundamental: that America is a Donald Trump kind of place now? That it’s not about messaging and turnout, because more people turning out will just mean more people voting for him. All kinds of people, in all kinds of counties.
Before the polls closed, I’d had a silly idea that I would go into my daughter’s room if Harris won, no matter what time it was, and whisper to her that America had elected its first female president. She wouldn’t care. She is 3 years old and she had spent the evening asking why — because in our house, if the television is on it’s usually for sports — nobody on CNN was throwing a football. But I would know the moment was historic, and I would care, so I would tell her.
And as Trump took Pennsylvania in the 2 o’clock hour, I found myself going up to her room anyway. Kneeling by her bed, holding her hand while she slept. Thinking about how, eight hours earlier at an ice cream parlor, she had departed from chocolate ice cream for the first time to try a different flavor, mint chip, and declared it her new favorite. There were so many flavors in the world left for her to try.
Maybe tomorrow you can try a new kind of ice cream. Maybe tomorrow you can find a tree that hasn’t lost all of its leaves yet, and look at how yellow and red they are. Maybe you can get your car washed and donate to a worthy cause, maybe you can write an angry letter and also sort through your kids’ winter clothes. Tomorrow you can cry or scream in your car, but maybe you can also leave a banana muffin for your favorite co-worker. Kindness is still the best balm for psychic wounds; it helps both the giver and the recipient.
Someone on my social media feed posted last night that “despair is not an option,” but of course it is. Despair is always an option. But moving backward is not. So maybe you can do all of this and still be filled with despair, and still keep going, because if you are going to be filled with despair you might as well also be looking for connections with other people, trying to figure out where your thread is, trying to figure out how to use it to make a stitch.
This place could be beautiful, right?
I am beginning to wonder if that poem is not about how parents can sell hope to their children, but a self-soothing plea from adults holding their 3-year-olds’ hands at 2 o’clock in the morning, needing something to whisper into their ears. Adults who are hoping the next generation will have tools that their generation did not.
We tried, we failed; you’re younger, you’re better.
The bulldozer is coming tomorrow to knock the place down, but maybe there’s some stuff in here that can be salvaged.
The old armoire just needs a little elbow grease; the table could last for generations if someone would just take care of it.
Maybe it could be you, when you’re older. Maybe you can show me how, too.
This place could be beautiful, right?
Right? Right?
Follow Monica Hesse on X @MonicaHesse.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
