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A Community of Voters

A Community of Voters

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I voted after work, entered the almost empty gym of Fox Mill Elementary School as the new, earlier darkness was settling over the suburbs.

It brings back memories, this polling place: all the trips I’ve taken there, many with one or several kids in tow, introducing them to the mysteries of the voting machine, giving them a sense of civic responsibility.

Today, as for the last many years, I voted alone. But not really.

When I gave the clerk my name and address, she smiled: “I think everyone on Fort Lee Street has voted today.”

Really? I said, with a grin I didn’t think I could muster. I felt a sense of silent community with my neighbors. Pride of place? Not exactly, but close.

Yes, I voted. And I wasn’t the only one.


(What I saw on the way to the polling place.)

Sweet Charity

Sweet Charity

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Her name is Lois. She works at the McDonald’s where Dad’s coffee group convenes. Always cheerful and friendly, Lois didn’t like to smile. She would hold her hand in front of her mouth to cover up  her missing front teeth.

A few weeks ago, the guys (and the few gals) who meet to solve the world’s problems over a cup of senior coffee (the same as regular coffee but it costs only 59 cents) took up a collection to buy Lois a new set of teeth. Lois accepted the gift, got the teeth — and a new life to go with them.

I didn’t meet her, but I did read the thank-you note she wrote to her customers and friends. She said she can’t express the happiness she feels now, being able to smile without embarrassment, without wondering what everyone is thinking when they see her “ugly teeth.” “You gave me back my life, my joy, my confidence,” Lois wrote.

The note was photocopied so that everyone could read it. But they have already received all the thanks they need — it’s right there every time they buy their coffee. It’s right there in Lois’s smile.

Stewardship

Stewardship

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Passing through the woods last evening on a quick walk before dinner, I crossed a bridge that Tom built. It’s a very humble plank bridge (not the one above) that took him no time to throw together.

He did it to help us (and other ramblers) over a slippery crossing near Little Difficult Run. Other neighbors have mapped the paths, cleaned the creek and taken chain saws to downed trees, leaving the logs neatly stacked along the trail.

I think of a line from Frost: “Whose woods these are I think I know.” The forest paths we traipse are either neighborhood common land or Fairfax County stream valley park. They belong to all of us. But they belong more when we care for them. The bridge wasn’t about craftsmanship; it was about stewardship.

The Morning After

The Morning After

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In Lexington, Kentucky, the new mayor-elect, Jim Gray, took my father out to McDonald’s a couple weeks ago. Until Dad fell last month, he had been working on Gray’s campaign, and he felt bad that he wasn’t able to squire the candidate around to some retired-guy coffee groups as he promised he would.

But no problem, about a week ago (and more importantly, a week before the election), Candidate Gray stops by the house, picks up my dad and drives him to the coffee groups. How many votes did Gray snag that morning? Maybe half a dozen. Frankly, I haven’t heard of such a neighborly act from a politician in a long time. Maybe ever.

I couldn’t vote for Jim Gray, of course. And in our corner of the world the election wasn’t as dramatic as it was for much of the country. But I like to think that there are hundreds more Jim Grays out there today — I’d like to think that at least in a few places, the good guys won.

Unseen Connections

Unseen Connections

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In The Whistling Season, by Ivan Doig, Paul Milliron pauses for a moment to muse outside his one-room schoolhouse:

“There at the waiting pump I could not sort such matters out totally, but even then, I am convinced, began in me some understanding of how much was recorded on that prairie, in those trails leading to the school. How their pattern held together a neighborhood measured in square miles and chimneys as far apart as smoke signals.”

This passage makes me think about all the connections that are stitched into a community, often invisible and tenuous but there just the same. These connections are particularly hard to discern on the outer edge of a major metropolitan area. But I figure if Doig could see them on a prairie I ought to be able to feel them — and to sing them — in the suburbs.

The Power of the Porch

The Power of the Porch

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Tonight I was on one of my brief after-dinner strolls when our neighbors called from across the street. They’ve just finished a front porch across the width of their house and they wanted me to see it. So I sat on their porch swing and we talked for 45 minutes. This is remarkable because in 21 years it’s the longest conversation I’ve had with Bob and Donna. In our suburb, as in many, backyard decks and patios are where you sit outside on a pleasant evening. Imagine all those people suddenly flipped, sitting in front of their houses where they can see their neighbors, rather than behind. Then multiply this by millions of people across the land — and you have one way to build community, to bring us face to face with the people we live closest to.