Essay #1

-- By AndreaMetz - 10 Mar 2017

Lisa

In the mornings, my mother’s room smelled like Calvin Klein perfume, lotion, and hairspray. The scents swirled heavily in the air as five (seven, nine…) year-old me watched her get ready for work at the Allstate office where she sold insurance. Her skirt suit hung on the handle of the closet with matching heels on the floor underneath as she put on her makeup, lipstick last, and spritzed herself with perfume. She had teased bangs that she would then fix into place with the hairspray, shielding her eyes with one hand. I loved that smell. It made me feel instinctually safe.

The refuge of my mother’s bedroom on a weekday morning is a memory. As many mother daughter relationships do, ours got increasingly difficult as I got older, and today our interactions are often tense. I accuse her of self-interestedness and blindness and she (in so many words) accuses me of elitism while she brags to her friends about the fact that I go to Columbia in the same breath.

Born in 1965 in a small town called McConnellsburg (population 1,061) in Fulton County, Pennsylvania, my mom was the second youngest of five siblings. She headed off to Penn State Main Campus on an Air Force ROTC scholarship at seventeen, but got pregnant in her second year with my brother, then again with my sister just nine months later, and never graduated. Ronald Reagan was President of the United States. He won reelection in 1984 by 512 Electoral College votes.

Where do I stand?

Unlike some of my peers here at Columbia and around the country, I cannot dismiss all Trump voters in one broad sweep no matter how much I would like to. My mother voted for Trump. 84.2% of Fulton County did too. In fact, my mother has voted Republican in every election since 1984, Fulton County has voted Republican in every election since 1964, and Trump won Fulton County by a larger margin than any other county in Pennsylvania. Such as it is, I carry my love for my mother and my home alongside the heavy weights of disappointment and shame.

I tried to convince her not to vote for Trump. And then I did again. I tried everything I could think of. I tried to be aggressive, I tried to be kind, I tried to use humor, I tried to appeal to her sensitivities as a mother, a grandmother, a woman, and pretty much anything else I could think of. I cried, I yelled, I ignored her texts, I texted too much. Now, after it is all said and done, questions remain. Where did I go wrong, and how can I be a persuasive advocate if I could not convince my own mother that voting for Trump was the wrong thing to do? I do not have satisfying answers to these questions, but asking them is helping me see themes that will be important to me in my career.

Truth

During this election, we witnessed an assault on the truth. Fact and fiction were seemingly indistinguishable when fake news articles were read, believed, and shared by millions of people. After the election, many articles came out about how Facebook’s algorithm kept people isolated from what was happening in separate political spheres because their newsfeeds were self-reinforcing repetitions of their likeminded friends’ and families’ opinions. While my own newsfeed was mottled with pro-Trump fake news headlines, I didn’t take them seriously enough at the time, thinking the outrageousness of the claims would undercut their persuasive value. I was wrong. Fake news had a significant impact on the outcome of the 2016 election.

In my career, I want to protect the truth. Whether that means investigating corruption, defending the First Amendment, giving abuse victims a voice, or something else entirely I do not know, but I know I want to remain committed to facts and to intellectualism in a world where they are under attack.

Understanding

No one act or thought is defining, and though a single act can tell you a great deal, people are nuanced in ways that one act cannot encompass. Throughout my legal career and my life more broadly, I want to approach people with understanding and compassion. Viewing my colleagues, clients, and adversaries through this lens will help me to not forget that today’s motivations have roots in personal histories and that people are different on different days. This basic understanding will serve me well in a profession that centers around human contact and conflict.

Perseverance (Working Toward a Sea Change)

I haven’t given up on my mom - I will keep trying to change her mind. I would not waste my time if I did not think it was possible, but I know it is possible because it has happened before. At fifteen I began dating a woman and my mom was anything but supportive. Five years later, on a hike with my mom and the woman I was dating at the time, I watched them joke with one another and was struck by how accepting she had become. I was proud of her for choosing to change her intolerant views about my queerness, and I was proud of myself for being the catalyst for that change. Our relationship suffered during my high school years, but when her mind changed it was a sea change for our relationship, and during college that relationship was the best it has ever been.

Similarly, I cannot accept that her mind will not change about the Republican’s increasingly dangerous views. The hate and fear I see in their words and actions do not align with the nurturing side of her that I know well. Perseverance is required of law students and lawyers no matter their work. I will use that perseverance to continue to diligently try to change her views. It may take years, it may not happen at all, but I have to keep trying.

It seems odd, I know, that having your mother accept your queerness is easier by far than persuading her to vote for Hillary Clinton. But you see, loving you is an important part of your mother's identity. As is voting Republican. You will do twice much as good for the Republic if you persuade two young people to vote who weren't going to bother. And you will have a much better relationship with your mother at the same time. She will probably vote to re-elect Trump, which shouldn't matter if even two young people decide to vote who weren't going to bother. She's steadfast about some things, including that she loves you even though she wishes you could be different, knowing that it's a miracle that you are exactly who you are. Which by no means implies that she is going to be predominantly nice about it with you. But I do look forward to meeting her at graduation, which I hope will happen.

To make this essay better isn't to write it differently; it's written very well just as it is. But as you may have guessed from what I've said already, I think it's possible to stand only a few millimeters from where you're standing and thus gain some meaningful breadth of view. There are almost as many good reasons for letting other people practice electoral politics on your mother as there are reasons for not being her lawyer. Just because we are struggling to change society doesn't always mean we have to be struggling with the people we love who love us back. A draft of this essay that embodied that among your other brave and sensible ideas might be good for the author to have written out for herself.

Words: 995

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