Covert Mom: Box Full of Letters

I took the kids to a postcard writing party over the weekend. Sat down, looked at the white tablecloth, couldn’t think of a thing to say.
Congressman Tom Reed has been ignoring everyone from Tompkins County for years now, why would a postcard suddenly change his outlook? I uncapped my fountain pen, a low-end Lamy.
I addressed cards to the White House, to Andrew Cuomo, to Kirsten Gillibrand, and Tom Reed, the nib running smoothly across the cardstock.
Earlier in the week, my eldest daughter reported that she and her classmates had a discussion about abortion in school – whether it was ‘good’ or ‘bad’. We talked for a long time about this at dinner, and I gave lots of details, background information, offered some discussion points. Abortion is easy to talk about. White nationalism, not so much.
We aren’t taught negative narratives about ourselves as a nation. Americans are always the good guys, the ones who win. The plunder, genocide, exploitation and white supremacy that sit at the heart of our nation’s history is not central to our idea of ourselves, and it should be. We have no vocabulary with which to describe the flaws in our democratic system, and how if those weaknesses were exploited it could crack. Is cracking.
I don’t know how to talk to the kids about what has happened since Trump’s Inauguration. I don’t know how to tell them about the global gag rule, about the Muslim Ban, about the airports clogged with protesters. I don’t know where to start.
Across the table from me, my son held five crayons together and cursorily scrubbed a blank card with them, his eyes listless. This was not the kind of party he’d had in mind. He handed me the card.
I wrote:
“To the Hon. Andrew Cuomo: THIS IS FAN MAIL. Thank you, Governor. You’ve made my heart go pitty-pat with the downright presidential actions you’ve taken since Trump’s Inauguration. Proud to be a New Yorker and proud of you. XOXO, Mariah.”
I have written lots of other letters to Cuomo, ones much more critical, and have come to feel we have a bit of a relationship, even if it is one-sided. How does one take these things seriously? What does the intern do, when she reads the postcards? Notes the zip code on a spreadsheet? I bet no one else will have used the word ‘pitty-pat’.
I tried again, wondering what other people were writing. Probably thoughtful, lucid, messages. This is Ithaca, after all. I felt like Beavis from Beavis and Butthead; inarticulate and surly. My son handed me another card, decorated again in his minimalist style.
“Dear Tom Reed – Steve Bannon just referred to himself as Darth Vader. Maya Angelou once said, ‘when someone shows you who they are, believe them.’
I write from your district in upstate New York and have long regarded you as a corrupt good old boy. Prove me wrong and stand up to the evil brewing in the White House.”
I wrote my name, tucking the H in a little fold, so that it almost looked like an L. Fountain pens make you feel like having bad handwriting is just an eccentric style choice. I penned another to Reed, the words flowing more easily this time, many of them Anglo-Saxon.
My daughter Billie handed me an illustrated card. The image on the back was of oil drums with brown sludge tipping out of them, trees all around. I made it out to the White House, addressed whimsically to Kellyanne Conway. As if. Perhaps her intern would read it.
“Dear Ms. Conway: You can lie all you want; climate change and pollution are real. Regulations are necessary. Ever been to eastern Kentucky? How about Dimock, Pennsylvania? My daughter drew this. She believes in Women’s Rights and the Constitution of the United States and in not lying all the time. Stop scaring her.”
I signed off, the ink from my pen dark like blood against the blue cardstock. Then I sat, blank. Around me, heads were down, sound of pens and crayons scraping paper. Briefly, I imagined a White House staffer sneaking their favorite postcards home to put on their fridge. I used to read dystopian cyberpunk to relax. Dark Swedish murder mysteries. They’re not working any more.
I gathered my coat, the wiggly little boy, the slightly older girl, and a pile of postcards to take home.
We will be back next weekend.