Election Day is over but, as I write, we’re exactly one week from it. The day started out rainy and cleared up just about the time we headed for the ballot box. From that moment to this, some level of the peace found me, and I am grateful.
Immediately, we found a parking meter around the corner from the box – a pleasant surprise because we anticipated a very long wait. We put enough quarters in the meter for three hours, only to soon discover one single quarter would have been more than enough – another pleasant surprise.
The drizzle had probably turned lots of voters away, but the weather had quickly turned autumnal. The leaves, in perfect golds, oranges and reds, flickered in a gentle breeze. A burden, carried like a bowling ball in my teeth, was lifting. I felt it as I dropped my envelope to finish doing the best I could for America, at this time.
Everyone was courteous and smiling, as though the weight was lifting for all of us across the board and across the aisle, as we all could relieve our minds. Regardless of the outcome, there was finally a light at the end of the tunnel and, though Murphy’s Law would claim it was the headlamp of an oncoming train, we see it as a reprieve. It is, of course, the calm before some storm or other, but we’re hoping for a good hiatus in the interim. The wait would soon be over – and the weight would soon be lifted, by sheer finality, as so many finished doing the best they could for America, at this time, too.
If we are among the lucky ones, life offers us highs and lows, because the less fortunate battle unceasingly uphill just to survive. Those with exorbitant wealth can afford to be blasé always. Regardless, though, at this moment, most of us are beginning to feel the effect of some level of tentative, if not dubious and frightening, closure. Today’s late day sunset is playing the perfect soundtrack for it.
This is the feeling I used to get in the summer at sundown in the swimming pool. There’s a peaceful concession in being on the brink of something that will happen whether we like it or not – an unavoidable surrender, a peaceful acceptance of that over which our affect was noted and is finished, with a submission to finality and the quasi peace it offers. It’s the peace you feel when, in a health crisis, you’re finally on the stretcher at a great hospital. You’re done. You relinquish control and rest. It’s out of your hands.
Soon back home from voting, it was lunch and fresh brewed coffee on the front porch. Bliss. It’s what I wish for all mankind, every day, all day … would that wishing could make it so.
I hear a beautiful wood pecker at work in the tree just past my chair and the barely audible hum of bike wheels coming up the newly greased road. Then, silence again, of the deepest and most beautiful kind. It’s momentary, of course, but that doesn’t make it any less divine.
Mostly, there is the mental rest that comes with the pending resolution, whatever that may be. The outcome, the most important part of America’s public frenzy, is in sight. It is a brief respite for the battle weary, and we can be sure cleanup will be a monumental task whichever side is victorious when the ballots are all counted (and let’s hope they all are counted).
The woodpecker keeps working unaware of the situation that affected each moment through which he drilled my beautiful crab apple tree. That’s nature. That’s what woodpeckers do on a planet healthy enough to support the flora and fauna, for now.
In one screen version of “Little Women,” Jo March talks about her imagination coming alive in the quiet of the night; she says, “I give myself over to it.” That’s the feeling which, hopefully, we’ll enjoy, at least for a little while now. It’s the culmination of the efforts of many individuals, each believing that he or she voted for what’s best for America. It’s the moment between waves when the swimmer breathes, the moment a full-time mom fills her coffee mug with cautionary optimism and precarious, but hopeful, trepidation.
Some of us are going to be unhappy, and others will rejoice when this election is settled. Then, there will be innumerable issues to resolve.
In between, we have lunch, the porch and the woodpecker.
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