Our country’s political divisiveness has finally crept onto the pages of my column. Only for this issue, mind you. Between candidates’ and parties’ robo calls, videos, mailings, and texts begging for dollars, I crave our government’s return to a simpler time. One when folks running for office were qualified to fulfil the duties of said office, had the wishes of their future constituents as goals should they win, and were willing to work “across the aisle” with fellow Congressmen and women in a fashion true to that of a real democracy. I, and many others, remember those times fondly.
Initially, I feared my verbal “going off the rails” might be more suitable for the Op Ed pages of the Island News, instead of for a “Wholly Holistics” column dedicated to living a healthier life, physically, mentally, emotionally, and/or spiritually. But I believe this one may still serve that purpose. Certainly for some people. After all, the current turmoil in our nation hangs thick as Lowcountry humidity, spreading stress in one form or the other daily.
‘Nuff said.
Following is a slice of memoir I penned 18 years ago. Should you and I be of the same mindset, relax and enjoy the time travel. One never knows where you may land, at least for the rest of the story!
Exhaling in Wonder
Holding my breath for the year-plus-long duration of the 2008 Presidential campaign seemed to work. Though emotionally winded, I still possessed enough energy to pop a few handsprings when the Democrats exited Denver with a candidate charismatic enough, brilliant enough, experienced just enough to be electable. Barack Obama, U.S. Senator from Illinois, seemed a steady Eddie, calm under fire, with a worldview broad as the blue Pacific. Liberal, with a reverent nod to God, he was husband to lovely Michelle, spunky lady lawyer of the exquisite, sculpted cheekbones, and father to two giggling girls.
He also was attractive. (Since I am my mother’s child, I have to add that shallow observation, for in 1961 the grand Southern lady who raised me shamelessly admitted to voting for Jack Kennedy because he was so good looking.)
And wonder of wonders, Obama was half African American, enough of a half to garner a spot in history as the very first to seek the Oval Office with seemingly far more than a snowball’s chance in hell of attaining the position.
Time passed, and a bandwagon already weighty with excited Democrats grew to welcome disillusioned Republicans and just-old-enough-to-vote teens, whose predecessors, weary of tired two-party choices, had opted green for Ralph Nader. In direct proportion to a flagging economy, party coffers burgeoned. Giant corporations signed checks with many zeroes. Outspoken movie actors hosted star-sparkled fundraisers and pledged allegiance to the hope-filled cause. Oprah welcomed the slim, well-spoken candidate to her afternoon show with a hearty endorsement as her studio audience shrieked approval. Schoolchildren donated fat glass jars laden with pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters.
And single mothers, weary from working for minimum wage while shouldering a burden tough for two parents, sent crumpled dollar bills – ones, fives, even tens – to this son of a man from Kenya and woman from Kansas, a son who spoke of change in words so eloquent and vehement that possibility rose like the North Star, steady and true.
Again, I held my breath as election time drew near. Determined to do my part to prevent any re-creation of the Florida chad debacle in my corner of South Carolina, I volunteered to poll watch for the Democrats. Voting early, I stood in a twenty-minute line at election headquarters and encountered smiling faces, happy countenances, and total joy as we few Beaufort County citizens discovered our shared Presidential selection.
Releasing a satisfied exhale, I basked in hopeful confidence until Election Day.
But opinion polls were close. Too close. Sucking the dank November air into my lungs, I drove the six miles of wet highway on the edge of town to my assigned polling place, a predominantly Black district, Grays Hill. Careful to obscure my “Obama/Biden” bumper sticker from voter view, I tucked my truck under a shedding live oak thick with Spanish moss, climbed creaky wooden steps into the well-used, cement community center, and took a chair next to my Republican counterpart, a chatty retired Navy fighter pilot with eyes of crystal azure.
All afternoon, I checked off the names of my party’s faithful as they signed in and cast their choices behind the royal blue curtains of five voting booths. Daylight waned, and still neighborhood folks streamed in. By 6:15, the windowpanes had gone black, when a poll worker who’d stepped outside for a smoke stuck his head in the door to shout, “We got a curbside voter.”
Like a dancer waiting to take the stage for a well-practiced performance, the poll manager matched strides with a young man in a wet brown parka, the driver of the voter who for physical reasons could not come inside. He quickly registered his charge, while the manager unclipped a laptop voting machine and carried the contraption outdoors. The only watcher still on duty, I grabbed my heavy red sailing raincoat and followed, anxious to witness this unusual procedure.
Tiny rain droplets hung in the early evening air and dotted the windshield of a dark sedan idling in a gravel parking slot beside a metal “Curbside Voting” sign. A silhouette filled the passenger window, which rolled down as the poll manager approached. I watched over her dampening shoulder as she carefully placed the machine on the voter’s lap, explained the how-to’s and backed away. The window rolled back up.
Through fine mist gathering on the glass, I saw a woman in a red beret. The laptop shone bluish white, illuminating a round face etched with untold years’ worth of wrinkles. Her eyes grew wide against yellow-brown skin as her fingers found the keys that shot X’s onto her ballot, confirming her right as an American citizen. Touched to tears, I gazed through the rain-beaded window as those eyes looked first at the screen, then down at the keyboard time and again. And then she stopped, stared straight ahead and smiled, her head nodding slowly for a few seconds.
I wondered if she had voted for the man whose skin color twinned her own. Was she thinking of the courageous men and women who had struggled and suffered in the Civil Rights Movement, who had signed their names with shaky X’s to vote in hostile Southern precincts all those years ago? Had she perhaps been one of those?
The window rolled back down, the manager removed the machine, and the window eased back up. Gathering again on the glass, droplets soon distorted her face into an Impressionistic image, and the features blurred.
All I know is that I saw the radiance on her face for that moment, and I exhaled on that miraculous, historic night. And kept on breathing.
