TIn his case, my spouse and I worked with a family law attorney to draft our wills and advance directives. We tackled this 10 years ago, after our first child was born, but abandoned the plan between sleep deprivation and overwhelming new responsibilities. Since we are parents of two kids no longer, and accustomed to the many losses and logistics of growing up, it seems to be time to see.
During a two-hour meeting with our lawyer, he asked questions about end-of-life scenarios: if you both pass away, who do you want for your children if they are minor? Who wants to manage the assets left in trust for the children until they are old enough to manage the assets themselves?
While these questions are the rules for writing a will, they sent me into an existential spiral. I suddenly considered the past and the future. What does it mean to build a life? Why do you want to leave me?
Since November 5th, I have been thinking about heritage as it relates to United States politics.
I have a writing career argued and lawyer for universal healthcare, racial equity in maternal healthcare, paid family allowances, a living wage for professional domestic workers and housework wages. It becomes free for mothers. I was saying to years All that autonomy of the body for all men is not possible for me alive, but for the children alive.
When I consider Trump’s re-election, I consider the possibility of living much of my life under a conservative political regime that will pass and protect laws contrary to my beliefs: the government opposed to labor protection and environmental regulation; control according to * cruelty, I do not care.
When our attorney explained some of the legal issues he was writing our wills to protect the kids’ inheritance from the estate tax, I wanted to say, “Actually, I’m fine with taxes! I like the social network!”
But with the excuse of innumerable parents, I am wont to clear up all the reasons for my judgment: I only want what is best for my children.
I hoped that with a better century we would leave posterity, that we could be proud of our virtues and arts. Knowing it won’t happen, then acknowledging my conscience in this, leaves me sad and disappointed. My successor will not be noble or simple, but he will be a man.
I am also worried about my personal legacy. Six, my younger daughter is easy to call herself “dumb”, “stupid”, “deformed” and “useless”. I’ve never used those words to describe myself, but she still drew. They pop up when it’s hard to hear, when she feels I’m upset or frustrated by her.
This is also hereditary. I know the tendency to internalize negative feelings. I lived so many years of my life because I was never allowed to fully express my sadness and anger and hurt.
I want to change. And I sit with her and urge her not to go down that road. I’m saying that if I just love her and be with her, she won’t have to say that she’s terrible which simply isn’t true. It works more days than not.
“There is no other world. This is the only world we are in,” writes Alexander Chee in On Becoming an AmericanThe essay struggles with the writer’s point in the event of Trump’s first election. Chee urges us to keep our art, our values, and what matters to us, in all uncertainty: “This is a revisitable land, so difficult to change, so easily changed.”
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What I still do every day, I tell myself, even when I don’t believe it. I believe that my children are free to be themselves, and it is my duty to make them do that and to prove it. And I believe that it is better for my children, that it is convenient for all, to be most vulnerable.
More from Angela Garbes’s Medium there:
Taped to my other wall is another passage from Chee’s essay, which I wrote by hand after reading it in 2018.
“Write to your dead… Let them hold you accountable,” Chee writes. “And when the war comes – do not be deceived, it is already here – beware that you write even for the living.” Those you love and those who come into your life. What will you give them when they get here?
I show my children every day – imperfectly, prone to tears, sometimes unsure of what to offer. I will forgive them in the world we live in, to teach them pleasure, to care for themselves and others. My legacy will be a model and will prepare people to work for their freedom, with the hope that people will prepare long after they are gone.