It spring up quickly. One of our kids asked if anyone was free for a zoom call. People chimed in, and seemed eager. Seven of them plus us old folks all joined. Technically, there were three sets of twins, since one daughter was using her phone for audio and the computer for video, and our firstborn used a laptop to converse and a desktop for screen sharing. Plus the regular identicals. What evolved was a marathon visit spanning two coasts and three countries. 

 

Hosanna said she needed to vote, as it was the first opportunity in her state. We trotted along and witnessed as she realized just how long the line was. It curled around the corner. But upon speaking to the first of many volunteers she found out that everything moved quickly, mostly because of social distancing. So it was that we stayed in contact while she followed the stream of citizens into Fenway Park and cast her ballot. It felt epic. We cheered. 

 

I have a respectable voting record. It is possible I missed once, with the flimsy excuse of having recently moved and barely keeping track of four children. But all of those ballots since 1976 combined did not consume the sheer volume of energy that has emerged in 2020. 

 

The West Wing cast did a recreation of an episode called Hartsfield's Landing. The plot entails a braid of concurrent chess games, the small town in New Hampshire where voting begins at midnight, and a stand off between the Taiwanese and Chinese navies over rumblings about a free election. The production complied with covid restrictions, using a minimum of props. The actors and actresses are all older now, and have themselves voted multiple times since the show ended. Their common purpose was a zealous hope of inspiring disenfranchised people- especially blacks and millenials. 

 

I suppose it would be calmer to go back to those years when showing up at my polling place was not much more than one errand in a busy day, and a sticker for my kids. But being part of a groundswell in which a nation is breaking open frozen parts of our democracy gives me hope.