I was 8 years old. My two big sisters were in junior high and high school. My little sister was in elementary school like me. We loved where we lived.
My big sisters had extracted a promise from my dad at the dining room table one Sunday. “Daddy,” the eldest said, “promise we’ll never move until I’m out of high school.”
“Until I am, too,” my other big sister said.
“I promise,” said Daddy. “I would never do that to you.”
All four of us girls heard it. So did my mom.
Well, Daddy lost his job and given the kind of work he did, there was no way to replace it and stay where we lived. It was a professional job, one that he’d spent a lot of time in school to qualify for, and he really wasn’t qualified to do much of anything else that would pay him enough to support a wife and four daughters.
He was offered a job in a distant land and we moved. The whole family was unhappy that he’d broken a promise, and my oldest big sister was furious. She practically stopped talking to him until she left for college. It was some unhappy years for the fam.
But you know what? My oldest big sister got to go to college. So did my other big sister. So did me and my little sister. We all have had professional careers of our own because of that.
If my dad had kept his promise, that probably wouldn’t have happened. We probably wouldn’t have been able to maintain our middle class life if he had decided that keeping his promise was more important than providing for his family.
I would like all Republican senators and house representatives to think about what will happen if they keep their promise that they seem so hell bent on keeping, specifically the promise to repeal Obamacare. If they keep their promise, they will be setting up conditions to keep the very people they made that promise to from thriving. If, on the other hand, they break that promise because they actually care about the future of their supporters and get real about the harm that will be caused by keeping that promise, then their supporters will most likely be mad at them for a while, but their lives will be better for it.
My dad made a promise he never should have made. He broke it, suffered the consequences, and ultimately his daughters’ lives were better for it and so was his.
Republicans have made a promise they never should have made. Will they do the right thing like my dad did? Or do they really not give a shit about the people who supported them and whose interests they claim to represent?