Chapter Two
On the ride to my campaign headquarters, which is now my transition headquarters, I have a few minutes to myself to…reflect.
I never knew my father. Momma was only two months pregnant with me when he died in a boating accident. He never knew he was about to become a father. I was a late baby, and Momma was forty-five when she had me.
But we did okay. She was anattorney, and I wasn’t even two years old yet when she made her first run at public office in Tallahassee, for the city commission, followed by county commission when I was six. I was nine when she ran for the Florida Senate the first time.
We were a team.
While I envied kids who had dads, I never really felt like I was lacking anything growing up. Momma had lots of friends and coworkers, andthey all adopted us. We never spent a holiday alone, always had places to go, or people to come over to spend the day with us. I had adopted aunts and uncles all over, attorneys, judges, lawmakers, and other political bigwigs.
At the time, this was normal, to me. I felt loved.
Honestly? I really didn’t have a lot of friends my age. Or any friends my age, come to think about it. I’m precociousand skip several grades in elementary school. I spend my teens helping research court cases for pro bono legal work for appeals, and in high school I wrote book reports on bills that passed the state legislature, just because I’m sort of a smart-ass and didn’t like one of my English teachers who said they didn’t vote for my mom.
Yes, the principal ruled my teacher had to allow the reports whenit wasn’t a specifically assigned book. And the teacher wasn’t allowed to let the other kids have free choice in books and then assign me a specific one.
The principal later admitted to me in private that she voted for Momma.
Twice.
By seventeen, I’m already finishing my third year of college, with my eye on a law degree.
I graduate from law school at nineteen and pass the Florida Bar Examinationon the first try. Fortunately, their minimum age is eighteen, so I’m good there. Unfortunately, some of the higher offices I want to run for have minimum age requirements. For example, state rep is twenty-one. US senator is thirty.
Thirty-five to run for president.
Momma encouraged my studies. She told me to never be ashamed of my goals, to never explain myself, to never apologize for goingafter what I wanted in life, as long as I stayed within the law and didn’t deliberately set out to hurt someone else in the process. To hold trusts when I promised to, and to protect the people who trusted me.
To fearlessly pursue what I want, and to stay true to myself in the process.
I worked my ass off. I knew from when I was a kid and old enough to understand what my mother did for a living,both being an attorney as well as the solemn duty of being an elected official, that I wanted to be president.
The first time I announced that, according to her, I was eight.
I remember Momma going really quiet and turning to me. She didn’t smile, didn’t laugh, didn’t humor me. She looked at me, and I’ll never forget what she said.
“You dothat, then, Shae. You work hard, you don’t let peoplehold you back or stand in your way, and you don’t apologize for wanting it. Because anyone who tells you that you can’t do it is someone you don’t want in your life.”
I wish she was alive to see what I’ve accomplished. I know she’d be proud of me.
While I know I only did what she begged me to do, there are times I still lie awake at night and wish I could erase certain memories from my mind.
Thankfully, that’s what I have Chris, and now Kevin, to help me with.
* * * *
I am an only child with a beautiful, intelligent, driven mother who instills a fierce work ethic in me. I grow up doing my homework in conference rooms and State Capitol chambers and in law libraries.
I once asked Momma if she minded if people talked about her being a widow, and she told me no, because it was the truth.Once I was old enough to understand, she also let me know it wasn’t horrible to play to a truth if it helped you score points at the polls. Being a widowed single mother is political gold, a plucky underdog story that only the most heartless of bastards isn’t moved to tears by.
I didn’t understand at the time how easy it is to leverage that same political gold against an opponent. That there’ssomething distasteful involved with going after a widowed single mom and bad-mouthing her.
By the time I’m practicing law, my mother is already a legend in Tallahassee. I’m known as Marlene Samuels’ little girl, which is annoying when you turn twenty-one and hit a bar for the first time with a bunch of lawyers old enough to be your grandparents and even your server knows who your mother is.
Unfortunately, when I’m twenty I started noticing little…things.
Like Momma writes a lot more stuff down than she used to. Not on her phone, which was her standard before, but on paper. She carries a little notebook with her everywhere, and acts like she doesn’t want me to see it.
