To my daughter, whose vote now equals my own:
Not too long ago, a speechwriter-turned-pundit named Peggy Noonan questioned whether you should vote at all and, if you do vote, whether your vote should count as much as a vote from a seventy-year-old business owner. If you click on the link below, you can see the video of this for yourself:
http://crooksandliars.com/...
I want to tell you what I think about that but, as you know I do, I’ll circle around it first. This tendency of mine drove your Mom crazy for the first few years of our marriage but you’ve grown up with it. I’m also going to share my thoughts on the internet so if this comes back to haunt you, I’ll actually be pleased.
I want you to know that, while I am always proud of you and very pleased at how you’ve turned out, I’ve been particularly proud of a few things that have happened in the past six months.
First, I’m proud of the intensity, and the detailed consideration of humor, you brought to creating your character Little Red for the musical Into The Woods. Adults come to high school plays with a mixture of trepidation ("Dear God, please don’t let anything bad happen...") and a willingness to be charmed. By the time we become an audience, we’ve had a long day and, since your plays are at the end of the week, we’ve had a long week, too. We’re tired and are inwardly worried that we’ll have to rustle up some energy to stay awake and say positive things about something that made us wince or even cringe from time to time. To actually be entertained for a couple of hours is a considerable blessing.
You, my daughter, made grown men and women laugh. Your character was dead-on and the subtlety you brought to your humor was of professional grade. The humor enhanced your character and established its unique qualities without resorting to slap-stick or anything cloyingly cutesy. Your humor honored the intelligence and maturity of your audience, just as any comedic actress ought to provide and display.
And this, my daughter, is something you carry with you as a person. I saw it early when you won the joke-telling contest with Papa’s Quasimodo joke*. You were what? Five? Six? And you had tired, nervous fathers at a Daddy-Daughter Dance stopped in their tracks. You say now that you really didn’t understand the joke but your timing and the conviction you brought to the delivery were far beyond your years. Men were repeating the details to one another later because they wanted to have things straight when they shared the joke over the next couple of days.
Humor is a compliment we pay to those who are in our audience, especially when our audience is face-to-face with us. Gestures, details, subtlety, choice of words, timing- the more consideration we give to what others will see and hear is a sign of our respect for them.
Second, I was also proud of your behavior at your high school graduation. Your peers were so depressingly serious. It was obvious that many found attending the ceremony to be a burden, something to be endured for their parents as a pit-stop on the way to a party or a retreat to a closed-door bedroom filled with electronics. You, my daughter, saw the reality of the moment. You celebrated and, one-by-one, you brought others around you along. Your family saw it in the stands. Little by little, radiating out from you, graduating high school seniors were sitting up a little taller, smiling a bit more, looking at each other, applauding with more gusto and appropriately and maturely enjoying the moment. Your attitude spread in ripples to at least one hundred of your peers and probably beyond as the simple emotions of joy and excitement were released. Graduates at that ceremony had a good time and I could draw a map to the source.
Third, I have been proud of the relationship you established with your boyfriend. Though you are now apart, I was pleased with the connections you made with him and I have faith in who you will find as a life partner. The two of you were fun to watch; how smart you both are added to your relationship and your appreciation for each other’s talents and humor was a blessing. Sometimes, when I could hear the two of you riff off one another, it was a hoot. They say a woman should look for a man who can make her laugh; let me say that a woman has great power and a relationship is healthy if she can make her man laugh. In fact, if you cannot make your man laugh, he is not worth your time.
Nevertheless, what I was particularly aware of were the ways you dealt with the issues involved in being from different religions. His religion is strict and carries a demand to proselytize. You stood your own and did not shrink from the challenge. You acknowledged and paid respect to his beliefs but made it clear that you were not going to convert and, indeed, you are not interested in converting. Your Mother and I never made an issue of this throughout our marriage. I made it clear, without confrontation, that I was never going to convert to the religion that you, your Mother and sister share. To do so would have been dishonest of me. I did not "go along" with the decision to raise your sister and you in your religion; I made that choice freely and with deliberate consideration. I am quite pleased with the relationship you have with God and I recognize the potential of where it may lead you. It is a small secret of mine that I still wonder if, someday, I will become a minister. Perhaps we will attend theology school together. The very idea delights me.
By the way, your paternal grandmother has let me know that, if I want, I can convert before she dies. Oy. I let her know, as I am letting you know now, that Jesus and I are tight. I know you three women in my house wonder from time to time about what the heck is going on in my head about religion. Sigh. Someday I will try to put it all into words.
What does all this have to do with voting?
You, my eighteen-year-old, female, property-less citizen of the United States of America, are able by the grace of God and a handful of Constitutional Amendments to cancel out the vote of a seventy-year-old business owner. For that matter, you can cancel out the vote of a fifty-year-old school teacher, which in some cases would be a good thing. If you go back to that Noonan video, you’ll see that not only does she worry about having you vote at all, she’s worried that some union-member teacher will sway you into not being a conservative voter. Trust me when I say this but many of the teachers I work with are quite conservative, some of the women teachers are openly fans of Sarah Palin and some of the men teachers believe the United States has a God-given right to being a triumphant exception to all international rules and constraints. One of the men I eat lunch with believes John McCain is too liberal.
Just to complete my smashing of the leftist-teacher stereotype, the other day a teacher at lunch asked me, as an opening to a conversation that continued through lunch and on to another day, if I were a "progressive." I answered, "No, I’m a liberal." Other conversations at the table stopped. I believe, but cannot confirm, that the backgammon players forgot whose turn it was. That’s how unusual I am and I teach in a low-income, Latino-dominant district, not some wealthy suburban district.
Anyway, my daughter, I would rather you vote than that mythical seventy-year-old business owner, if it came down to a choice. You will vote for your future. You have a mind that functions with a healthy balance of seriousness and playfulness that allows you to see more potential in life than danger. On a balance of choices, you are more likely to risk, and possibly fail, than be a prisoner of skepticism and do nothing. Your ability to focus, consider choices, deliberate on details and make firm decisions that affect your actions is a sign of a mind that is fresh and alive. I trusted myself as a voter at age eighteen and I would today. In fact, I do still trust myself as an eighteen-year-old voter because I trust you. The fact that Peggy Noonan doesn’t trust her eighteen-year-old self is her problem.
Finally, my daughter, I’m going to put a thought in your head and let you file it away for later. During my most recent visit with you at your university, I was able to listen to other older adults talk about you and watch how people your age act when they are around you. I have put my observations together with what I have heard and seen for the last year or so and I have found a common thread. The combination of your talents, your personality and your essential, grounded nature has produced someone that others respect.
That respect, by the way, borders on admiration. I’ll hazard the idea that, for some people, you represent what they desire from themselves. That, if for no other reason, is why you should vote and let others know that you have voted and the decisions you made.
Study hard and play hard. And on those foggy days when the air captures the smell of the eucalyptus trees, breathe deep and remember that your Dad loves you and is proud of you.
(*The Quasimodo Joke: Quasimodo needed someone else to help him ring the bells. An armless man came looking for the job but Quasimodo said, "How can you ring the bells? You have no arms!" The man stepped forward and smacked his face into a bell, which rang loudly and clearly. Quasimodo was amazed and said, "Do that again!" That happened again and again until finally the man was so dizzy from smacking his face into the bell that he fell off the roof to the ground below.
A policeman came over to where the man was and began asking if anyone knew who he was. Everyone said, "No" until Quasimodo came down. The policeman asked if Quasimodo knew who the man was. Quasimodo said, "No, but his face rings a bell.")