It was cold in Portland, and my grandparents were young—twenty two—and newly married. When they heard the news, they left their little house together and walked. They didn't talk, and they didn't know where they were going. They just walked and walked. They ended up, long past lunch time, at my great-grandmother's house, all the way on the other side of the city.
That was all my grandmother told. I remember hearing it as a little kid, too little to begin to understand. I remember the first time I asked about it: Why did you walk so far, Grammy? Her answer was no more clear: We didn't know what else to do. I was eight. Why not? She told me, Because we knew your granddaddy would have to go to war. Leaving me to imagine—which I still couldn't, yet—what it meant for them to know that.
My granddaddy did go to war, and came home safely, thanks to a bout of the measles that landed him, at a key moment, in the hospital rather than on the battlefield. My grandmother spent the war in Denver, operating a cash register at a grocery store. When it was over, they danced in the streets. They told us all that, every time.
But these days when I think about that walk, I think about it unsoftened, without the ending. I think about two people just starting their lives together, already having seen some tough years, and suddenly knowing the shape and length of their lives would depend on something utterly beyond their control. I think about their silence. I imagine rain.
If my grandparents were still around, I'd ask them what came next—not years later, but that afternoon. I've imagined it: My great-grandmother's house was warm. She made them soup and bread. She'd lived through her own hard times. They stayed quiet. They felt some kind of comfort sitting at her table. She drove them home. It could be true.
I want to ask them, What did you do when you got home? I suspect the answer is so unnotable as to be a little scary: they did just what they always did in the evening, just like we do, these days. Swept the floor. Read a little, maybe. Went to bed. Knowing—and not knowing at all—what would happen the next day, and the day after that, and after that.
Showing posts with label the times. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the times. Show all posts
12.07.2008
11.12.2008
This is part of a map of the area within three miles or so of our house. The dots are home foreclosures. Home foreclosures from the past ten months. It’s a very strange time to be around, isn’t it?
Yesterday on a highway off-ramp in a fancy neighborhood, I saw someone shifting from one foot to another, wearing a big warm coat and loosely laced hiking boots, and holding a cardboard sign. COMPLETE DESPERATION, it said in perfectly even letters. It was spelled correctly. We are fucked, I thought. We as a whole and we, our family. My God. All I know how to do is spell right and make nice lettering. What on earth do I think is going to keep us safe?
Then this morning I noticed a grimy little late-model hatchback parked outside our neighborhood food co-op. It had two newish-looking bumperstickers: Obama/Biden ’08. And If Anything Can Go Well, It Will.
It’s a liminal time. We’re between presidents. We’re between (but no one knows where between) stepping off the diving board and splashing (in what position and into what sort of water God only knows) into the pool. Almost everything measurable is in a pretty crappy state. Hope seems like a stretch, yet many of us feel it.
Sometimes I’m terrified. What if I lose my job, and then what if there are no jobs, anywhere? How would we pay our mortgage? Where would we live? What if our parents lost their houses too?
But mostly I’m walking through this with some kind of equanimity that comes from I don’t know where. I’m curious about what happens next. Driving through the suburbs, driving past all those malls and malls full of stores full of junk that no one needed anyway, I can’t really get sad about the possibility of their falling empty, and I believe, stubbornly, naively, that the most important things will survive. Our communities will be torn down in some ways, but they'll get built again, built, I hope, on something more real than they've been resting on.
I grew up knowing grandparents who valorized the depression and who still lived, in a lots of ways, like they did in that lean time, and taught their grandkids to as well—or at least shamed our parents—within our earshot—about the extravagances they allowed us.
I’ve spent over a year of my adult life living in one of the poorest countries in the world, Nepal. And while I’m sensitive about not wanting to romanticize poverty, knowing how life is for so many there, I can see, vividly, that almost everything we have in this country is extra. The truckloads of things that we have and don’t need. The houses—even ours, at 1100 square feet or so, is enormous by most standards in the world—full of furniture and gadgets and clothing.
I don’t wish anyone pain, and there’s certainly plenty of it rising up here. I don’t relish that. The people hit hardest by this in most ways are those who were already struggling hardest, and that’s cause for nothing but grief. But part of me thinks we deserve to get pared down. A lot. Maybe I’m just sick of the long, slow fall, but part of me takes a deep breath and says, bring it on.
11.11.2008
We did!
We spent the morning of election day door knocking, the girls and I and a friend of ours. I pulled the girls in the little red wagon. It was unusually warm for November 4, sunny and breezy. Iris played happily in the wagon; Ingrid hopped in and out, running along beside us, helping ring doorbells and jumping down the last two steps of each front porch into drifts of yellow leaves.
If Ingrid remembers anything from that day, it will probably be that. She still plays "door knocking" at home, "hanging" pieces of paper from our inside doorknobs if no one's home.
A came home from work early, and after the girls' naps the four of us walked to the school together to vote. We were quiet, walking there. It felt big, and even now, a week later, it's getting easier to forget the tension of it—the sense of being almost there, of not being able to do anything else to help, of hoping—but not knowing—that things were going to go the way we wanted.
After dinner we brought the TV up from the basement. Two friends came over, and my brother- and sister-in-law. As the first states were called for Obama, we were our usual skeptical selves. Based on 1% of precincts reporting? Even when the TV networks started calling the election for Obama, I couldn't quite believe it.
Planning the evening, we'd expected lightheartedness. We could open that bottle of champagne in the basement! But in fact we just sat and watched, and looked at each other, often very quietly. A kind of fragility came over us, I think, as we waited, half joyful and still half afraid.
A few minutes later, as A surfed through the channels, I caught the phrase, John McCain is going to— just before A changed the channel. I said, Wait, McCain is going to— and then every station cut to McCain stepping up to the podium, and I cried. Thank God, I thought. Thank God.
Watching Obama and his family appear on that stage, lit up in the dark, and then hearing him talk to the whole country at once, what could we all do but cry? Every one of us did. What a relief, to think that our president is someone we can admire and be proud of. What a relief to feel that we're finally heading in the right direction. What a joy that people who risked their lives for civil rights have now seen what just a few decades ago they could only imagine. And what a delight to be part of electing someone who—I'm convinced, in spite of everything he's up against—is going to be a great leader. I thought, So this is what people mean by 'proud to be an American'.
I heard on the radio the next morning (and this made me cry again in the middle of traffic) that in many places, during Obama's speech, people stopped their cars and opened their doors and turned up the volume. Americans stopped their cars and opened the doors. Oh my God that is huge.
I know reality will nip away at the edges of all this unabated joy. Compromises, politics, obstacles. All of that will happen. But for now—still, a week later—HOORAY. And HOORAY! This is just what we need.
If Ingrid remembers anything from that day, it will probably be that. She still plays "door knocking" at home, "hanging" pieces of paper from our inside doorknobs if no one's home.
A came home from work early, and after the girls' naps the four of us walked to the school together to vote. We were quiet, walking there. It felt big, and even now, a week later, it's getting easier to forget the tension of it—the sense of being almost there, of not being able to do anything else to help, of hoping—but not knowing—that things were going to go the way we wanted.
After dinner we brought the TV up from the basement. Two friends came over, and my brother- and sister-in-law. As the first states were called for Obama, we were our usual skeptical selves. Based on 1% of precincts reporting? Even when the TV networks started calling the election for Obama, I couldn't quite believe it.
Planning the evening, we'd expected lightheartedness. We could open that bottle of champagne in the basement! But in fact we just sat and watched, and looked at each other, often very quietly. A kind of fragility came over us, I think, as we waited, half joyful and still half afraid.
A few minutes later, as A surfed through the channels, I caught the phrase, John McCain is going to— just before A changed the channel. I said, Wait, McCain is going to— and then every station cut to McCain stepping up to the podium, and I cried. Thank God, I thought. Thank God.
Watching Obama and his family appear on that stage, lit up in the dark, and then hearing him talk to the whole country at once, what could we all do but cry? Every one of us did. What a relief, to think that our president is someone we can admire and be proud of. What a relief to feel that we're finally heading in the right direction. What a joy that people who risked their lives for civil rights have now seen what just a few decades ago they could only imagine. And what a delight to be part of electing someone who—I'm convinced, in spite of everything he's up against—is going to be a great leader. I thought, So this is what people mean by 'proud to be an American'.
I heard on the radio the next morning (and this made me cry again in the middle of traffic) that in many places, during Obama's speech, people stopped their cars and opened their doors and turned up the volume. Americans stopped their cars and opened the doors. Oh my God that is huge.
I know reality will nip away at the edges of all this unabated joy. Compromises, politics, obstacles. All of that will happen. But for now—still, a week later—HOORAY. And HOORAY! This is just what we need.
11.04.2008
How late will you stay up?
There's definitely no way I'll be able to sleep tonight without knowing who came out ahead today. So, unless things start looking (shudder) 2000-esque, I'll be up as late as I need to be.
A (who—Emmie's right—is actually a saint) has other ideas. He feels he'll sleep better not knowing than he would either elated by an Obama win or in despair over a loss. So if things start to look like they'll go into the night, he's hitting the sack.
I can't quite conceive of how a sane person could think this way. He'd rather not know? Negotiating this difference is probably one of the tasks the cosmos has set for us in our marriage. (Or for me, anyway. He seems to totally get why I want to know before I sleep.)
A (who—Emmie's right—is actually a saint) has other ideas. He feels he'll sleep better not knowing than he would either elated by an Obama win or in despair over a loss. So if things start to look like they'll go into the night, he's hitting the sack.
I can't quite conceive of how a sane person could think this way. He'd rather not know? Negotiating this difference is probably one of the tasks the cosmos has set for us in our marriage. (Or for me, anyway. He seems to totally get why I want to know before I sleep.)
11.02.2008
In a Blue State
My political involvement has always been spotty, but this presidential election has me by the back of the neck.
After the 2004 DNC, which I don't remember watching, people around me kept mentioning the senator from Illinois who gave the keynote address. I finally watched the speech on line several weeks later. I was impressed with his nuance and level-headed smarts. I said to A, It's a shame that this country would never elect him president.
And now we might. The possibility of it has had me antsy and weepy for weeks now.
For me—pretty far left in a pretty far left city—the details of what each candidate would do in office have made my voting decision a no-brainer.
But beyond that, Barack Obama knows how to tell us the story of ourselves so that our struggles make sense and the solutions seem clear. Not easy—nothing will be, I'm afraid—but clear in the sense of knowing who we are and where we're going. That kind of leadership—the ability to explain, connect, and inspire—is a tonic that we need now as much as we ever have.
And Obama delivers it in a way that cuts through my thick, thick cynicism about everything and everyone in a position of political power.
Last Wednesday evening, Ingrid and A and I hustled down to the basement after dinner to watch the Obamamercial. At the end, the live rally, where he ended his speech, shouting to be heard over the crowd, We will change this country and the world, A and I were both in tears.
Oh shit, I said, after I recovered. I don't think I'm jaded anymore.
It's the possibility of losing that that makes me feel like my whole heart is wrapped around this election.
It's why I sometimes can barely breathe when I check 538 for the fourth time in a day, and it's a big part of why I've made myself swallow my shyness and pick up the phone to make campaign calls. The possibility of an Obama presidency doesn't just mean we on the left might "get our way" for a change. For me it also means the privilege of having a brilliant leader. And it means the pride of knowing that not just a few lefty intellectuals but a serious majority of my fellow citizens can recognize that kind of brilliance.
After the 2004 DNC, which I don't remember watching, people around me kept mentioning the senator from Illinois who gave the keynote address. I finally watched the speech on line several weeks later. I was impressed with his nuance and level-headed smarts. I said to A, It's a shame that this country would never elect him president.
And now we might. The possibility of it has had me antsy and weepy for weeks now.
For me—pretty far left in a pretty far left city—the details of what each candidate would do in office have made my voting decision a no-brainer.
But beyond that, Barack Obama knows how to tell us the story of ourselves so that our struggles make sense and the solutions seem clear. Not easy—nothing will be, I'm afraid—but clear in the sense of knowing who we are and where we're going. That kind of leadership—the ability to explain, connect, and inspire—is a tonic that we need now as much as we ever have.
And Obama delivers it in a way that cuts through my thick, thick cynicism about everything and everyone in a position of political power.
Last Wednesday evening, Ingrid and A and I hustled down to the basement after dinner to watch the Obamamercial. At the end, the live rally, where he ended his speech, shouting to be heard over the crowd, We will change this country and the world, A and I were both in tears.
Oh shit, I said, after I recovered. I don't think I'm jaded anymore.
It's the possibility of losing that that makes me feel like my whole heart is wrapped around this election.
It's why I sometimes can barely breathe when I check 538 for the fourth time in a day, and it's a big part of why I've made myself swallow my shyness and pick up the phone to make campaign calls. The possibility of an Obama presidency doesn't just mean we on the left might "get our way" for a change. For me it also means the privilege of having a brilliant leader. And it means the pride of knowing that not just a few lefty intellectuals but a serious majority of my fellow citizens can recognize that kind of brilliance.
10.25.2008
Comeback, and Calls
It's hard to start posting again after drifting off into non-blogging land. It's like I should be coming back with something really fantastic, or at least some sort of update or reason.
It's not (just) that I've been on Facebook all the time instead of writing blog posts. I have been on Facebook a lot, to my embarrassment, even though some people make a beautiful case for the literary merit of genres that limit composition length. Other than that, all my juice has been going to poems. I've been preoccupied with planning an event for work, the kind of task that always takes up more of me than it should. I've been unable to think of anything to write that doesn't sound dreadfully in character. I've been swooning, weirdly, over Colin Powell (nervous-but-eloquent changes of heart get me every time) and fantasizing that there's still time—if I get going right now—for me to be one of Malcolm Gladwell's late bloomers.
This weekend, A has taken the girls to grandma's, and I am here in the house alone for two days. Two days alone for the first time since May 2005. There is a lot to relish: breakfast in the quiet. Perpetual household neatness. Walking out the door without caring exactly when I'll return. The unexpected? I miss them. I expected to feel guilty (I do) and worried about Iris, who is without me for the first time ever and can't possibly understand (I am, and she's fine). But, unexpectedly, I miss them and want them here. And also, I have learned the following:
1. I blame my moods on my kids. HORRIBLE! Here, alone, I feel, on occasion, aimless or agitated or a little sad, and I think: If they were here I'd think I felt this way because I needed to be away from them. Yi iiikes. Horrendous. This break is worth it for that insight alone.
2. When I am out in the world alone and reasonably well-groomed and in a peaceful frame of mind? Men talk to me sometimes. As though I am of interest. I have no interest, really, in being of interest, but I hadn't noticed until now how being with—or preoccupied with—children renders me invisible to a whole (mostly creepy, but still) segment of the population.
Learning aside, I'm flying around the house organizing winter clothes, vacuuming behind things, canning applesauce, leaving poetry books in convenient spots where they remain rather than being carried around to unexpected places by cute little nascent object-carriers. This morning instead of slogging out of bed before six as usual I stayed asleep until 8:30 and dreamed that A and I were renewing our marriage vows and Barack Obama was officiating. He was splendid, and sang a lovely solo as well. I wore a white dress with a red corduroy coat over it.
And I spent a chunk of this afternoon, due in no small part to shannon's prodding a few weeks back, making calls for Obama, using one hand to hold the phone and the other to beat back my tongue-tied shyness and doubts about whether it could make a difference. Several people hung up on me, and one guy said, Yes, I know who I'm going to vote for but I'm not going to tell you who it is. My longest conversation was with an 85-year-old woman who was in the middle of baking cookies and who told me she doubted it mattered who she voted for.
When no one answered (often), I left a message: I'm a volunteer for Barack Obama's campaign. I'm a mom with two little kids and a job and a lot to do, and I'm using part of my weekend to connect with other voters and share my belief that Obama is the candidate who can be the leader we desperately need right now. I hope you'll vote with me. Thanks for your time.
I don't know if it will make a lick of difference, but leaving those messages felt like it could matter. I'm not the most articulate political talker, and who hasn't made up their mind already by now? But maybe somewhere out there is someone who just needs to hear one more respectful, passionate voice before they sway that way. Or who would be pushed, themselves, into some sort of action, knowing that someone like me is moved to pick up the phone. Anyway, if you're so inclined, it's easy to do. Worst case, you discover that you can survive being hung up on after all.
I leave you with this, which cracks me up even though of course I will vote:
It's not (just) that I've been on Facebook all the time instead of writing blog posts. I have been on Facebook a lot, to my embarrassment, even though some people make a beautiful case for the literary merit of genres that limit composition length. Other than that, all my juice has been going to poems. I've been preoccupied with planning an event for work, the kind of task that always takes up more of me than it should. I've been unable to think of anything to write that doesn't sound dreadfully in character. I've been swooning, weirdly, over Colin Powell (nervous-but-eloquent changes of heart get me every time) and fantasizing that there's still time—if I get going right now—for me to be one of Malcolm Gladwell's late bloomers.
This weekend, A has taken the girls to grandma's, and I am here in the house alone for two days. Two days alone for the first time since May 2005. There is a lot to relish: breakfast in the quiet. Perpetual household neatness. Walking out the door without caring exactly when I'll return. The unexpected? I miss them. I expected to feel guilty (I do) and worried about Iris, who is without me for the first time ever and can't possibly understand (I am, and she's fine). But, unexpectedly, I miss them and want them here. And also, I have learned the following:
1. I blame my moods on my kids. HORRIBLE! Here, alone, I feel, on occasion, aimless or agitated or a little sad, and I think: If they were here I'd think I felt this way because I needed to be away from them. Yi iiikes. Horrendous. This break is worth it for that insight alone.
2. When I am out in the world alone and reasonably well-groomed and in a peaceful frame of mind? Men talk to me sometimes. As though I am of interest. I have no interest, really, in being of interest, but I hadn't noticed until now how being with—or preoccupied with—children renders me invisible to a whole (mostly creepy, but still) segment of the population.
Learning aside, I'm flying around the house organizing winter clothes, vacuuming behind things, canning applesauce, leaving poetry books in convenient spots where they remain rather than being carried around to unexpected places by cute little nascent object-carriers. This morning instead of slogging out of bed before six as usual I stayed asleep until 8:30 and dreamed that A and I were renewing our marriage vows and Barack Obama was officiating. He was splendid, and sang a lovely solo as well. I wore a white dress with a red corduroy coat over it.
And I spent a chunk of this afternoon, due in no small part to shannon's prodding a few weeks back, making calls for Obama, using one hand to hold the phone and the other to beat back my tongue-tied shyness and doubts about whether it could make a difference. Several people hung up on me, and one guy said, Yes, I know who I'm going to vote for but I'm not going to tell you who it is. My longest conversation was with an 85-year-old woman who was in the middle of baking cookies and who told me she doubted it mattered who she voted for.
When no one answered (often), I left a message: I'm a volunteer for Barack Obama's campaign. I'm a mom with two little kids and a job and a lot to do, and I'm using part of my weekend to connect with other voters and share my belief that Obama is the candidate who can be the leader we desperately need right now. I hope you'll vote with me. Thanks for your time.
I don't know if it will make a lick of difference, but leaving those messages felt like it could matter. I'm not the most articulate political talker, and who hasn't made up their mind already by now? But maybe somewhere out there is someone who just needs to hear one more respectful, passionate voice before they sway that way. Or who would be pushed, themselves, into some sort of action, knowing that someone like me is moved to pick up the phone. Anyway, if you're so inclined, it's easy to do. Worst case, you discover that you can survive being hung up on after all.
I leave you with this, which cracks me up even though of course I will vote:
9.13.2008
Another political post or two and I'll be qualified for the vice presidency.
My friends and family and I spend a lot of time het up about Those People on the Other End of the Political Spectrum. What are they thinking? They must be brainwashed. They are inhabiting some weird alternate universe.
I just stumbled on Jonathan Haidt's What Makes People Vote Republican? (linked to from—and pointedly summarized in—this great Judith Warner editorial, which is sort of funny), and it's the most thoughtful approach I've seen to this problem of alternate universes. Leave it to an anthropologist to reveal righteous indignation as just another form of incomplete understanding. Academic and thick-ish, but very, very worth a read.
I just stumbled on Jonathan Haidt's What Makes People Vote Republican? (linked to from—and pointedly summarized in—this great Judith Warner editorial, which is sort of funny), and it's the most thoughtful approach I've seen to this problem of alternate universes. Leave it to an anthropologist to reveal righteous indignation as just another form of incomplete understanding. Academic and thick-ish, but very, very worth a read.
9.10.2008
Primary
Yesterday’s primary election here was not suspenseful. None of the races, within my party and precinct, at least, were heavily contested. I voted out of habit, and to make my mark for a couple of the school board candidates.
Our polling place is the middle school five blocks from our house. We stopped there on our way to the library. Iris wiggled in the backpack, grinning at the officials and peering around at our neighbors. Ingrid held onto my leg, and I knelt down to show her my ballot.
“We vote to decide who gets to do certain important jobs,” I told her , “like being in charge of the schools, and making the rules for the country. Everybody gets to vote to help decide these things—all the grownups in this country. And whoever gets the most votes, gets to do those important jobs.”
I choked up, saying this to her. Explaining our complicated—and, lately, ugly—system of government in so few words was like trying to tell her about a bird by presenting her with a sun-bleached pile of strong, elegant bones. Here is what holds this all up, I was saying to her. Here are the ovals we fill in with a pen.
I couldn’t believe how hopeful I had to make myself to say those things, and how readily she accepted them. There was no room for election fraud, electoral gerrymandering, or smarmy campaign strategies. I didn’t talk about how my grandmothers, at her age, weren't certain they’d grow up to vote, or how, as adults, they couldn’t tell their own little daughters that all grownups in this country help choose our leaders. After paring all that away, what remained was the most fragile kind of hope: This is where we can all say what we think is best.
The lump in my throat will be even larger in November. So much rests on the outcome, I don’t know about those thin, light bones. The people who do those important jobs will decide whether there’s war or peace in this world. They’ll decide what kind of country my little girls grow up in. They’ll have the chance to chip away at—or make worse—the great mountain of suffering—human and otherwise—on this planet.
When a weird sideshow full of meanhearted digs, irrelevant personal details, and cheap, illogical appeals to our most selfish impulses can rile so many into bizarre devotion (even as the rest of us retain the taste of throwup in our mouths for weeks), how much do I trust my neighbors to vote what is right? How much can I trust that the simple act at the core of our country’s being will move us any closer at all to where we ought to be?
Voting feels a greater honor than ever—the chance to elect someone who can really lead and inspire, can pull us out of the financial and social and spiritual mire we’ve made for ourselves. It also feels more an act of faith than ever: I fill in a circle, and, through some kind of alchemy, someone new—or not—appears at the helm of (still, arguably) the most powerful country in the world. There’s more than voting, of course, that I can and should do to make the world I want. But, still, so much rests on it, that inky spot on a sheet of paper, the whirring machine I feed it into. I don’t pray often, but the thought of all those ballots in November is enough to make me whisper, God, if you’re there, please make this work the way it should, the way I’m telling my daughter it does.
Our polling place is the middle school five blocks from our house. We stopped there on our way to the library. Iris wiggled in the backpack, grinning at the officials and peering around at our neighbors. Ingrid held onto my leg, and I knelt down to show her my ballot.
“We vote to decide who gets to do certain important jobs,” I told her , “like being in charge of the schools, and making the rules for the country. Everybody gets to vote to help decide these things—all the grownups in this country. And whoever gets the most votes, gets to do those important jobs.”
I choked up, saying this to her. Explaining our complicated—and, lately, ugly—system of government in so few words was like trying to tell her about a bird by presenting her with a sun-bleached pile of strong, elegant bones. Here is what holds this all up, I was saying to her. Here are the ovals we fill in with a pen.
I couldn’t believe how hopeful I had to make myself to say those things, and how readily she accepted them. There was no room for election fraud, electoral gerrymandering, or smarmy campaign strategies. I didn’t talk about how my grandmothers, at her age, weren't certain they’d grow up to vote, or how, as adults, they couldn’t tell their own little daughters that all grownups in this country help choose our leaders. After paring all that away, what remained was the most fragile kind of hope: This is where we can all say what we think is best.
The lump in my throat will be even larger in November. So much rests on the outcome, I don’t know about those thin, light bones. The people who do those important jobs will decide whether there’s war or peace in this world. They’ll decide what kind of country my little girls grow up in. They’ll have the chance to chip away at—or make worse—the great mountain of suffering—human and otherwise—on this planet.
When a weird sideshow full of meanhearted digs, irrelevant personal details, and cheap, illogical appeals to our most selfish impulses can rile so many into bizarre devotion (even as the rest of us retain the taste of throwup in our mouths for weeks), how much do I trust my neighbors to vote what is right? How much can I trust that the simple act at the core of our country’s being will move us any closer at all to where we ought to be?
Voting feels a greater honor than ever—the chance to elect someone who can really lead and inspire, can pull us out of the financial and social and spiritual mire we’ve made for ourselves. It also feels more an act of faith than ever: I fill in a circle, and, through some kind of alchemy, someone new—or not—appears at the helm of (still, arguably) the most powerful country in the world. There’s more than voting, of course, that I can and should do to make the world I want. But, still, so much rests on it, that inky spot on a sheet of paper, the whirring machine I feed it into. I don’t pray often, but the thought of all those ballots in November is enough to make me whisper, God, if you’re there, please make this work the way it should, the way I’m telling my daughter it does.
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