My mother’s faith

For most of her adulthood, she participated in the political life of San Mateo, holding elected and appointed offices. And one thing she was fond of saying was that politics is a series of cycles — that, though the present may seem as if it may never end, time’s insistent drumbeat ensures that everything is in transit. For my mother, this meant that democracy — her democracy — no matter its present circumstance, is never fixed, so long as its citizens understand their sacred responsibility in standing up and setting its course.

She usually mentioned this when a particular election that she cared about hadn’t resulted in her desired outcome. But, though she was certainly not a religious person, she had a deep faith in the fundamental legitimacy of her country’s political institutions and their sanctity, in all their strengths and weaknesses. She didn’t always agree with the institutions’ decisions — occasionally, it drove her to a strong glass of Scotch — but she believed that our system of government is never a settled thing. That it’s going to be difficult work precisely because it is a democracy and, ultimately, each of us must choose what it will become.

Knowing this, she once said that she had no expectation that a completely unflawed democracy would arrive in her lifetime.

What she did believe was that our political system only promises that each of us shares the responsibility of having a part to play in its continued creation. She lived the idea that the deepest meaning of one’s citizenship is in the going out: to take action, to speak up, to claim as ours the bulwark of vigilance that must lie at the heart of our political freedom.

After she died, I found a letter she sent to me in college that said we can choose what our country might become, but that the freedom to choose — in our actions, in our voting, in our words — is not a given. She closed by writing: “I am always asking myself what I can do to protect the freedoms we have. I ask myself everyday, Mike. We all should.”

 I’ve thought a great deal about, if she were still alive today, what she would say about how the country’s current leadership has diminished the possibilities of our nation’s communion. And, in so doing, has abused the nation’s very soul. Though the passing of the years has whittled away many of the distinct memories I have of her, I have been struck recently that as each day often heralds a constriction of what we have all come to believe America should stand for. Its compassion, its decency, its concern for all who live beneath the cloak of its democratic ideals. I wish that once more the two of us could chat about her cycles, and our responsibility in ensuring that they bend toward the vision of inclusion and freedom that was at the heart of her America.

I never imagined I would come to write so much about democracy, or my attempts to understand my role in it. When friends ask what’s spurred me to do this, I usually answer with something like: “It certainly must be the times we’re living in.”

Which is true. But, I also know, as I type these words, I am not alone in this typing. As I look down at my hands, they are certainly mine, but the words they make are not mine alone. My mother is indeed chatting with me as I write, that even in her absence she is pursuing the never-ending work of maternity. Her particular maternity, a shepherding that touches me each time I watch someone clasp in their hands their pocket-size Constitution, those hallowed pages that helped call America into being.   

In this cycle, though the landscape of our nation feels as if it is shifting frighteningly beneath our feet, my mother still resides immovable in my heart. This heart that must beat always with the trust she had in her fellow citizens and their never-ending pursuit of a more perfect Union.

Mike Nagler taught for many years at Cañada College and was a member of the Burlingame Library Board and Foundation