Marching with my mother: why the anti-Trump march was the perfect day out

We arranged to meet outside John Lewis. As I waited for my mother in the midday sun, I thought about the other times we’d come here, just the two of us: shopping for school jumpers and, later, bedding for university, which included an enormously angst-ridden search for the perfect conversation-starter duvet cover that would convey my fun-loving ways, artistic soul and effortlessly cool attitude in one striking image. That image, I can exclusively reveal without the slightest retrospective regret, was Garfield the cat. Twenty years later, my mother and I were on Oxford Street again because of another orange cartoon creature.

We never actually discussed going to the anti-Trump protests. It was so much of a given that on the Friday morning we texted: “Time?” “Starts 12.30. 12.15 Oxford St?” “John Lewis?” “Y.” Should the police ever seize my phone, they will assume I am a spy, or at the very least a drug dealer, as opposed to someone who gets their political righteousness on with a person they know so well that full sentences are unnecessary.

My family moved to London decades ago, yet time cannot wither my mother’s midwest accent, nor London stale her infinite Americanness. As we walked towards the protest, my mother, in a carefully chosen red, white and blue outfit, stopped people to take photos of their placards, so she could put them on Facebook and show her friends in the US: “Oh my gawd, his sign is a stitch! Look at that one, sweetie! But what is ‘a berk?’” If the US embassy was right, that Americans in London were best off keeping “a low profile” on the day of the Trump march, then we were in mortal peril.

Yet we didn’t feel it. Only those whose job depends on assuaging the feelings of a giant man baby could pretend that the march was against America, not Trump, and mine does not. In fact, it was striking how many other Americans were on it, declaring their Americanness through their placards, which lacked a little when it came to British wit and irony, but compensated with good ol’ American earnestness (“American and angry!” “I pay my taxes – how about YOU, Donald?”)

When I was a teenager, my mother and I spent a lot of time walking together in London, just the two of us. We’d go for long walks in Kensington Gardens, marvelling at the quiet we could never find in New York. We don’t really get a chance to talk properly any more, because when we are together, we are otherwise engaged in the World Cup of Who Can Be The Most Neurotic About My Children (“Does their nursery challenge them too much?” “Or not enough?” “Oh my God, has one of them fallen into the washing machine?”). This was the first time we’d walked on our own for years and, among thousands of shouting protesters in the crushing heat, it felt as intimate as our old walks along the Serpentine.

We started with the political chat: wasn’t it embarrassing that Britain even had to protest this tragic D-list minor celebrity who had somehow become leader of the free world? (Yes.) Wasn’t it insane that he was even still a thing, when we both remembered him as a local Manhattan joke in the 1980s, a property developer who tried to flog junk bonds? (Yes.) Was there even any point in protesting if the British prime minister was so craven, she still held his tiny racist hand? (Yes yes yes.) Would it be OK if we stopped at Pret at some point to get a sandwich? (Always.)

All around us, British protesters chanted, full of certainty that America deserves a better leader – the land of Lincoln! Roosevelt! Kennedy! My mother and I talked about whether she should branch out into clothes shopping at Zara or just stick with M&S. Someone from the Socialist Workers party approached us offering pamphlets, protesting about Trump’s racism. “That’s all you can protest about him, given that you’re anti-Nato and anti-EU, just like him,” I snarled at the hapless activist. “Surely you’re thrilled he won the presidency instead of Clinton!”

“Save it for your blog, sweetie,” my mother said, “your blog” being my mother’s name for Twitter.

I let it go, for her, and we walked on, muttering darkly. “Anyway,” I said, “what’s happening with your neighbours, the Doppleheimers?”

“Well, the youngest, Eleanor, is getting married, and Margie, the mother, is having a hip replacement.”

“Wow!”

We stopped for lunch on Regent Street, briefly visited Zara to see how it compared with M&S (poorly), then carried on marching. Media helicopters hovered overhead and the collective mood was joyful. My mother and I fell silent, genuinely moved to see all these British people partaking in a fight that so many Americans feel exhausted by. And if our talk wasn’t entirely political, that was just a sign of how at home we now feel here, and how we know that you guys have our backs. It doesn’t feel as if we’re dealing with this on our own any more.

“Isn’t this amazing?” my mother said.

“It really is,” I replied.

We were quiet again for a few minutes.

“So,” I said, “have you ever tried Cos?”