the morning after

The morning after the election I took my camera outside to look for beauty.  It was everywhere.  It bolstered my spirits and helped me feel ready to answer the girl's questions.

We scrapped spelling and math and for much of the morning I tried to answer their questions about "why?" and "how?".  We watched a video about the electoral college and the popular vote.  For a long time we talked about why we still live in a world where a woman can work her whole life to become entirely qualified for a position and still lose out to a man who is not qualified at all.  (They can add "glass ceiling" to their vocabulary list now.)

We talked about how so many people; women, African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, LGBT folk, to name a few, are feeling even more devalued then ever.  And I said, "it makes me want to work harder for equality" and Iris said, "it's actually kind of exciting, it makes me want to work harder too."  Thank goodness, because this is surely their work.

We talked about how we don't always win and how we need to still walk out into the world with kindness and compassion.  We invoked Iris' recent image of Dumbledore (Harry Potter reference) and how he "always tries to see the best in everyone".

We watched Hillary's concession speech and the girls were riveted feeling the power of her words aimed directly at them. "To all the little girls watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world."

And I think we left the morning feeling ready to walk out there.  Knowing that this life is a learning experience every step of the way.  And we felt the comfort of each other and of course the old dog snoozing in the sun.