On Tuesday morning my six-year-old son skipped into class here in Palo Alto, California. He was eager to cast his ballot in his school’s mock election - he was going to vote for Hillary Clinton for president, and Batman for best superhero.
After school he and his friends chattered loudly about the evils of Donald Trump, who to them is a bullying bogeyman figure, a playground demon to be feared and scorned.
On Tuesday evening, as we sat down to dinner, my son mentioned what a “big deal” it would be for America to elect its first woman president. As we ate, the results started coming in, and I explained about the magic number 270. He saw that Trump was closer to the magic number than Clinton, but he remained hopeful.
Later in the evening, as my son was going to bed, I could see from the results trickling in that it wasn’t looking good. But I said nothing. I let him sleep, let him have one more night without fear of the bogeyman.
Tuesday night, as the results showed conclusively that Trump would be president, I wondered what I would tell my son when he woke in the morning. “It’s hard to be a parent tonight for a lot of us,” said political commentator Van Jones. “You tell your kids, ‘don’t be a bully’. You tell your kids, ‘don’t be a bigot’. You tell your kids, ‘do your homework and be prepared’. And then you have this outcome and you have people putting children to bed tonight and they’re afraid of breakfast, they’re afraid of, ‘how do I explain this to my children?’”
Afraid of breakfast
I was afraid of breakfast, deeply afraid of my son’s reaction to the news, but also afraid for his future here in the US. We moved to Palo Alto from Ireland just over a year ago, buoyed by the optimism and inclusivity of Silicon Valley, eager to bring up our child in such a warm, welcoming society. Now I think of my son, and I realise how deeply vulnerable his position, our position, is in the US. He is a mixed-race immigrant here thanks to his father’s temporary working visa, and the life that we thought we were building here, the future we thought we had mapped out for him, and for us as a family, is now shrouded in uncertainty and darkness.
But as Barack Obama said, the sun would rise in the morning, and rise it did. Another sunny Wednesday in California, like all others, but a new, dark dawn. On waking, my son was quick to ask who won the election.
When we told him it was Trump, he cried, a deep, raw, devastation - too much disappointment for one so young. He curled into a ball, he hid in a corner, we tried to comfort him.
But then, something interesting happened. He dried his own tears, he uncurled himself from his ball of sadness, he got up from the floor, and he said, with purpose, that he wanted to build something new with Lego. While I was making breakfast, he worked away at his Lego, concentrated and alert and determined. And I felt there was a message in his determination to stay strong, to move on from disappointment and to try to build something new.
As Hillary Clinton said in her concession speech: “Let us not grow weary and lose heart, for there are more seasons to come and there is more work to do.”
The future is not in the hands of Donald Trump. The future is in the hands of our youth. And we must continue to give them hope, to show them that we can still change the world, that we can be motivated by kindness, love and inclusivity, not cynicism or judgment or exclusion. After such a dark day, this is what will keep us going.