Election Day

"Mom, what's an abortion?" she asked.

How do I always step in it?

We were leaving the polls where I had just voted a straight party ticket and then bought them baked goods from the fundraising table out front.  They asked me why I voted Democrat.  And I said I won't vote Republican.  I know that in local politics the big social issues of LGBT rights, abortion rights, national healthcare, welfare, food stamps, unemployment benefits, the social safety net, maternal leave, fully-funded schools, separation of church and state, all in all the ability of government to be a positive force in people's lives when they need it, etc., rarely come up.  But I believe that, even though local politicians decide on trash pick-up, zoning, pensions, etc and not the other issues, they still opt to side with the Republicans and accept and agree to the national political platform--they choose to be Republicans, when they could be Democrats or even Independents.  And so I won't vote for them because they align themselves with beliefs I can't believe in.  Period.

And so I mentioned abortion.  And had to explain myself.  I'm not sure they really got it and hope they aren't picturing the Massacre of the Innocents.  I focused more on women's rights to control their own bodies.  And the irony of the Republican desire for small government except when it came to women's bodies and whom you could love.

Sure, they're probably a little young for that speech, but it's the one I believe.  What better time to give it than on election day?

Especially because, with one exception, every single Democrat, everyone I voted for, in our town lost.  (But I was glad to see NYC's and VA's results.)

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.