The part of democracy that’s about participating in the larger community, specifically helping to make the process of community (not a verb, yet an active entity) function, always gives me a thrill. I feel it even when I am in despair about the politics of the day (year? era?). Take now.
Foremost on my mind on a Tuesday Primary Election morning is when will I vote? Do I go alone? Drag a friend? Stroll a toddler or bike with a seven year-old? After living in the same neighborhood for over twenty years, the smell of the school where I vote is as vivid a part of the process as anything else. Like the memories I still have—faint, very faint—of accompanying my parents to the polls—signs held by smiling strangers on the front walk at the community center, the sound of the levers clicking on the voting machines—the process of voting has strong sensory components. My precinct has paper ballots and drawing that particular line with specially inked pen, that’s become its own sensory memory.
I won’t say whom I’m voting for here (I haven’t kept it private, though; I’ve said so on my Facebook page or if you live here, there are quite a few lawn signs in front of our house). I am going to take the soapbox aspect of a blog to urge you—local or with an election elsewhere—to vote. Seriously, I think it’s good for you to do so. And I know the greater good benefits from your participation. That we have low turnouts is one of the most disheartening things to explain to one’s non-voting-age children. It’s disgraceful not to vote if you have the privilege of doing so. There’s no wiggle on that one.
One of my favorite memories from my eldest son’s birth day—nearly fifteen years ago, gulp—is that my mother-in-law brought an absentee ballot to the hospital, because there was a primary election that day and although we wondered aloud about whether I could amble from my hospital room across two parking lots to the polls, the answer was no.
Keeping with the tradition, the last baby was born on another election day (Super Tuesday, 2008) and her papa and I rolled in to the polling place at 7:55 PM, just about the last votes cast in our precinct. As we welcomed a biracial female into our family, we felt as if the future President was so likely somehow destined to be hers.
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Besides voting, I’m going to spend some time today trying to make a tiny, very local change—agitating about the lapsed efforts by Smith College to improve our intersection—a crossing that was originally part of their Elm Street construction project.
I’m also going to do a little work for Grow Food Northampton (I just joined their Board, long story but I can thank my lovely neighbor and dentist for that). A community farm—GFN’s singular focus right now—is so compelling, basically for the same reasons voting feels good. On a local scale, one can really participate in making dreams come true. This mention acts as an invitation to click and then, if you’re so moved, donate toward making a community farm a reality (even if you don’t live here!) and if you do live here, come celebrate the vision on October 2nd and see the farm.
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With the school year beginning, I’ve been thinking a lot about participation, everything from belonging now to two school communities that are cooperatives to how hard it is be the new kid. Joining a community—or rejoining, which is often the case at any school in September—requires a lot of each individual. There’s an inherent leap of faith: my being part of this place and this group of people matters. My being here, although it feels uncomfortable to begin, will get easier and although I know this—intellectually, maybe—I feel all knotted up. Still, I have to put a foot in front of another foot, raise my hand, chat up my neighbor… and wait for things to feel, different. That is such a very tall order.
We’ve been sharing that basic message with our lovely middle-school boy. He’s come into a brand-new (to him) school community, one very much in progress, after having spent his entire life with many of his classmates from the previous school (it’s a K-6, yet a sizable group started together as infants, toddlers or preschoolers).
I keep sharing that same message with myself. Monday morning was a mighty struggle and after he made it to the carpool, his papa and I were walking the two younger ones toward their schools. The papa said, “My head hurts.” I said my stomach hurt. He declared, “My heart hurts.” That’s it, I concurred and all day thought about how to keep reminding our understandably overwhelmed guy that how he’s feeling is simply par for the course; it’s what’s required of him in order to participate. And just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it won’t get better (don’t edit that sentence, go with me).
When he came back from school with a kind of things are still hard response and we talked through how that’s exactly where we—and he—could expect him to be with so many changes and so much newness, I felt gratified (and relieved) that by day’s end he’d decided that indeed going on the class trip is a good plan and that he reported to his papa at bedtime that while the day wasn’t exactly better, he understood to feel comfortable will take some time.
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Those moments—when a challenging message seems to—at least momentarily—click, they are kind of parenting gold. He went off in good spirits this morning, sporting a homemade sticker for his DA candidate (Dave Sullivan).
