Monday morning I hosted an event for my mothers’ group. One of the other mommies, with a one-year-old and a three-year-old, said that afterwards, she was going to the community center just down the street from my house to vote. I had been planning on going that afternoon, too, so we popped down there together. A fun little expedition, we thought.
Cars lined the streets. Police directed traffic. I finally manufactured a spot for myself out in a field by a tree. The line reached all the way around the building. They told us it would be about three hours.
After two hours, we rounded the second corner of the building, and the kids got tired of the little bag of toys I’d brought. They started wandering around in the grass, inspecting ant hills and tossing pine needles. After three hours we were all pretty hungry, so we started working on our small store of rations. The three-year-old asked me, “So where is the boat? Is it inside?” When she found out we were going to vote, not ride a boat, she was nonplussed, though very curious about the prize Obama would get if he won. “A sticker?”
An hour later, having only moved about ten meters, we heard that the servers were up and down, causing the delay. The wind picked up. I promised another round of snacks once we rounded the corner, but we couldn’t wait that long; then we were out of food. A helicopter hovered above us. Two news vans parked nearby. Little Girl kept trying to hide from the rising wind and setting sun by burying herself in my shoulder, rousing herself at this point only to ask to use the potty. After the first hours in line we knew the people behind us pretty well (in fact they’d been pushing our strollers for us for a while as we sat with the kids on the hill beside the sidewalk) so they held our spots and we rounded the building to use the bathroom. It had no paper towels or toilet paper anymore. The vending machine was empty.
A little after five hours in line, the daddies came and got the children. Husband neglected to bring me food, but my friend let me have half her sandwich. We finally got to the front of the building after six hours. The sun was setting, and the wind was high. I had no socks, and was wearing a skirt, and I had not been so cold since I collected sap from trees along a creek in Massachusetts in the snow back in college. And I was starving. Little Girl was home having a warm dinner, a hot bath, and an early bedtime. I was jealous.
The prize for reaching the front of the line was to have no people breaking the high wind in front of us, so we froze further, too cold and hungry and tired to talk, though we whooped a little when we were allowed, five at a time, into the building. We got in right before total darkness. The wait after that was another hour and a half. By the time it was my turn I was barely able to work the machine. I checked several times that I had voted according to my wishes, then cast my ballot, and hobbled over to get my sticker. Walking out of the building I saw a line that would last until one in the morning, filled with people huddled under blankets, hugging each other against the wind, occasionally calling out encouragements to one another about the possibility of the first black president.
