Month of Gratitude: Voting

Election Day, November, 1884 

by Walt Whitman

If I should need to name, O Western World, your 

   powerfulest scene and show,
'Twould not be you, Niagara--nor you, ye limitless 

   prairies--nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite--nor Yellowstone, with all its 

   spasmic geyser-loops ascending to the skies, 

   appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon's white cones--nor Huron's belt of mighty 

   lakes--nor Mississippi's stream:
--This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, 

   I'd name--the still small voice vibrating--America's 

   choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen--the act itself the 

   main, the quadriennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous'd--sea-board 

   and inland--Texas to Maine--the Prairie States--

   Vermont, Virginia, California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West--the 

   paradox and conflict,
The countless snow-flakes falling--(a swordless 

   conflict,
Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern 

   Napoleon's:) the peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity--welcoming the darker 

   odds, the dross:
--Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to 

   purify--while the heart pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.

I voted today, taking part in "America's choosing day" with Sis and Bud, who were as excited about the bake sale as the ballot!  They know we support President Obama, but they kept asking why.  And I tried to explain . . . .

I voted for President Obama and the Democratic Party because I am a woman, a mother, a mother of a girl, a mother of children who might be LGBTQ, a lesbian, a married lesbian, a lesbian with a Chinese wife, a member of a bi-racial family, a person with health problems, the wife of a person with health problems, the daughter of parents on Medicare, a sister to healthcare workers, a person outside of mainstream Christian  religion, a person who supports public schools and higher education, a person in the arts not corporate America, a person who believes in federal funding for the arts and museums, a vegetarian, a mother worried about the foods and medicines she gives her family, a person worried about the environment, a person who doesn't believe in the exceptionalism of the United States, a person who believes in the responsibility of government in supporting and protecting those least able to help themselves be it because of natural disaster/ age/illness/disability/hardship, a person who believes in the government's responsibility to regulate business including agribusiness/military-industrial complex/Wall Street/Big Pharma/etc, a person who believes in national healthcare and childcare subsidies and maternity leave, and for so many other reasons . . . .

Sis and Bud, one day you'll understand . . . and one day you'll vote, too.

And I am grateful for that right to vote, which didn't exist for women when my grandmother was born in 1902.