But my mother never saw hope. She saw corruption. She saw rigged systems and lies. She saw dismissal and derision. She didn’t see a sexual predator or a violent bully; she saw a man who would break the system that oppressed her. She didn’t see a con man working his grift; she saw revenge on the people she thought took her dignity, her safety. She made her own connections, found her own support groups. They unearthed secret plots against her. They affirmed her fears. She shouted into a swirling cloud of pain and anger and fed off the reverberations that came back.

I don’t believe the world she saw was real, but in the end it was all perspective. We were standing on opposite sides of a canyon, trying to communicate through fog. I couldn’t convince her that her own eyes weren’t telling her the truth. I couldn’t convince her that my work was for her, that my America — in progress and unpolished — was for her.

My mother voted for cynicism. She voted to tear it all down. And it might mean she loses the health care I fought so hard to get her. It might mean she has to wait years longer for help from Social Security. It will mean her beloved granddaughters have to grow up in a nation where a man who has allegedly sexually assaulted multiple women, who calls women pigs and mocks and derides and humiliates them in public is elevated to the highest office in the nation.