the first election

What was my experience with this election? How do I answer this question? I have been assigned this question, and have asked it of my own students. As a teacher, I decided to share this writing with my students, and as a student, I know my classmates will read it. My own electoral experiences are framed by the first presidential election I voted in. I had just turned eighteen, which is approximately where my students are now. There is the before and after of that first election, my own personal drama of the last weeks, the personal events in my life of the last two years. There is the fact that I cannot tell my students my own political affiliation. So where do I start? If I start with that first election, I would have to tell about boarding school, about my political activism (but not the issue), about moving to San Diego to work on the campaign and being sacked within weeks. Apparently, I am not a good fundraiser. After the summer I went back east, back to the neighborhood my parents still lived in, and started working for the campaign again, this time in voter educator, which was a bit more successful. I really believed I was making a difference. Is that enough to start? OK, here we go.
On the morning of November 4, 1992 I had to work. This was my “real” job, in other words the one I did for money. I was not volunteering at the polls. Honestly, I can’t remember why. No, I’ll make this a story without doubts. I could not volunteer at the polls because I had to go to my mother’s house. That is an easy reason; she is sick and at that point I was taking care of her, so I am sure she needed something. The truth? Neither answer above; the organization I worked for was afraid of violence, so we didn’t have anyone at the polls that day. I went to vote after stopping at my mother’s house, so I was driving the old blue Aries K station wagon. That car was a total lemon. I was so excited to finally vote, and then frightened because there was no traffic at all as I drove on the small residential street to my polling place. Where was everyone? I passed a cop, strange in this neighborhood. And then, out of nowhere, a man on a bicycle shot out from behind a parked truck. I slammed on my brakes and tapped his wheel, but he wasn’t hurt. Of course, the cop was right there, lights flashing and ready to give me a ticket. But he was kind, and I was weeping. I was so excited and distracted by my own politics I had almost killed a man, or at least that is how I saw it. Really, I had just run a stop sign, which was blocked by that same illegally parked truck, So the cop said he would write me the ticket but support me if I appealed it since he believed me. I suppose the real tears also helped.
And then I voted. Still full of adrenaline and fear from my incident with the bicycle, terrified that there weren’t many people at the polls, believing I had fought for something true and good and overwhelmed with anxiety at the possibility we would lose. We didn’t lose, and I still feel that rush of pride and anxiety every time I vote. The fear? Well, 15 years later a ballot in Wisconsin asked me if believed my fathers had the right to marry, and I stood there for a 5 full minutes unable to write down that yes, I do have a family, no matter what you call it. For the record, I can’t tell you how I actually voted on that one either.
What happened on November 4, 2008? On that morning, 547 days after my grandmother died, 1 day after Barack Obama’s grandmother died, and 9 days after my doctors announced I might have cancer, I slept late. Well, to be more precise, the painkillers I took after the biopsy were still making my drowsy, but not doing anything for the actual pain. And I still hadn’t registered. I had to get it together enough to find my proof of residence, stand in line (would there be lines this time?) and vote. That was my job on Tuesday, vote and wait for the doctor to call. And miss my grandmother.
When I asked my students to write the story of November 4, they wanted to know if they should include what they did, what they ate, if they watched television or went out with their friends. Of course, I said no, I wanted the story of the election, which is more than those simple facts. I didn’t eat anything at all; I can’t eat when I am really scared. I did bake 50 cupcakes; somehow, baking is comforting, even when it comes from a box. And I did think about our grandmothers. All of them.
I used to say I couldn’t get married, because my grandmother was waiting for my wedding so she could die happy. I know she died believing the United States was a hundred years away from electing a black man to the white house. She was a teacher too, at a high school in Harlem in the thirties. A girl’s school, all black of course, being that it was segregated. The grade you earned in my grandmother’s class determined whether of not you would got training to be a secretary or if you would be relegated to “domestic” work for the rest of your life. She never lost the understanding that her own actions always, somehow, implicated her in what she saw as the racist structure of our society. She never lost he belief that she could change things. And she never say November 4, 2008. Neither did President-elect Obama’s grandmother, but maybe that’s ok, because maybe she believed it could happen.
One of my students objected to this assignment, saying there was nothing to tell, that we don’t know anything yet. Maybe he’s right; we can start here. This is the first election. My friends ate the cupcakes, I don’t have cancer, our grandmothers are gone. We waited in line and we voted, and I know 40 eighteen year-olds who are excited and frightened and waiting to see what comes next.