Dear Reese,
Last year, I was among the top 1,000 listeners to the Broadway album “Suffs”, the musical about the women’s suffragist movement. That means you were among the top 1,000 listeners because I played it for you on repeat for much of the summer. Maybe someday you’ll have a subconscious nostalgic relationship with it. I hope it makes you feel powerful.
We listen to it on the car ride home this evening, and again while I’m making dinner. As usual, I cry multiple times. The good kind. The kind that is overwhelmed and awed by what people have accomplished, by what people suffered to move us forward. The timely reminder that progress is possible, but not guaranteed, so keep marching.
(I haven’t been able to listen to the album for a few months, post the election. I knew it would gut me. But I’m ready for some doses of backbone and hope.)
You like it when I dance around, either while holding you or while you gaze up at me from the kitchen floor looking for all sorts of trouble (tonight I switch out the stray bread tag you found for some nice, safe Tupperware).
The music gets stuck in my head. I sing the lyrics over and over again while frying an egg — “hold it together, see it through. Don’t let the bastards intimidate you. Push down the pain. Thicken your skin. Hold it together. Never give in.”
Someday you will have context for those lyrics and see that you have that same strength inside yourself.
Love,
Mama