…and it wasn’t because I was hobbling along on a new pair of on crutches (I busted a meniscus in my left knee on Sunday, hiking in nearby Shenandoah National Park. It’s going to get better). It wasn’t because the lines were extremely long—a few hundred people in front of me, as best I could tell.
What broke me down was a small sign, posted among the various instructions to voters (“no cell phones past this point”, etc.) stating that kids under 15 could accompany their parents into the voting booth...
From the very beginning, we always took our daughters into the booth when we voted. I remember explaining to an infant in arms, why I was voting for this one, or not that one. I remember explaining to a couple of school-agers, huddling with me in the mysterious curtained booth, what was important about each decision, and I remember their delight at pushing the final button to cast my votes.
My trip to the polling place on Election Day has always been a personal sacrament-- a precious ritual in which so many disparate people gather and make our wishes heard. The volunteers, often old people; the prosaic school gymnasium, transformed by the voting apparatus, the administrative tables, and the winding line of voters; the quiet and orderly functioning of our democratic process.
Although many elections have carried a sense of urgency, this time was especially intense for me. I was voting, for the second time in my life, to make a black man our President—I, who had grown up in North Carolina at the dawn of the Civil Rights era, when schools were completely segregated, and the Ku Klux Klan had a full-sized billboard at the county line, with a rearing, robed and hooded horseman and the title “Welcome to Klan Country!”. I was voting for representatives who would protect my rights as a human being, and as a woman. I was voting to help improve our higher courts, to better align the law with the intent of our Constitution.
And this time, both of my daughters, whom I had carried and shepherded into the voting booth over many years, both of them had already voted for the same goals!
So I cried. And I voted.
10:05 AM PT: Recommended--my very first diary (after years of lurking)!!!!
Dear Readers, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your comments--so many wonderful memories, current actions, and hopes!!!
Let's keep on helping the next generation(s) learn the beauty and significance of participating in the electoral process!