One Thousand Words

Our polling place was my kid's old school - they attended pre-k through sixth grade there (well, fifth grade, as sixth grade was during Covid distance learning) and are now across the street at the junior high. It hasn't been an easy adjustment, and that's all I'm going to say about it.

When my kid was younger, I was a stay at home parent. We took a HUGE financial hit, it was a very hard time, and I was often extremely overwhelmed by being constantly "on" as a parent. But I also hugely treasure the time I got to spend with my kid and how well I got to know them. One of the things I did was spend time volunteering at the school when my kid was in a half-day pre-k program. It was a half mile walk to get there, and I could turn around and go back or I could stay for four hours or whatever and volunteer. So I spent a few days a week in the classroom (a kid once waited until I yawned and then sneezed directly into my mouth) or making photocopies and doing other tedious time-consuming work that freed the teachers up to do more important things. And some days I'd go to the Dunkin' Donuts a block and a half away and listen to music and read a book or write or draw and just not... be a parent for a few hours.

Going back into their school brought up memories and also emotions. The smell of it is unchanged, old wood and wood polish and floor wax and tempera paint and wet mittens. It smells a lot like the grade school I went to, the smell of a school building that's over 100 years old and that smells a bit like a school built in the 50s or 60s but also... different somehow. More complex. There's more going on. There's also fancier doorknobs and more windows.

We walked through the school along the route I helped herd the kids while doing a hunt for the Gingerbread Man. We walked past the auditorium where my kid was in two musicals. We walked past columns painted with peacocks, and signs saying "welcome" in different languages, and unisex bathrooms. And we found the place to vote.

Voting was simple. We'd downloaded and filled in a sample ballot and were able to quickly mark things off the paper ballot with a black marker. They used to be microns but now they're sharpies, no doubt far cheaper. When I slipped my ballot into the machine it alerted me to the fact that I'd skipped a section. I was able to get my ballot back and fix it. My husband had too much marker bleed and the machine warned that the ballot might be thrown out for over-voting. He got a new ballot and submitted it with no problem. It was very nice to have that fail-safe.

It was a nice day. We saw people that we knew. I got a cranberry orange muffin. We voted. It's November.