Election Day
They say firewood warms you twice, but I disagree. It warms you four times — at a minimum. Once when you split each log after its been bucked, once when you stack it into a neat pile for storage, once when you’re hauling a load of wood from the pile into the house, and lastly (and most obviously) when it burns in your wood stove.
I was in the first phase of the gift of warmth that wood brings. Even as my breath was coming out in visible mist, warm sweat was dripping down the trunk of my body. The gas wood splitter was loud, leaving no space for sound of conversation or podcast listening. The satisfying crack however, could be heard, which I appreciated immensely.
This happened every year. Best laid plans for being proactive about having our wood ready to go in plenty of time for winter, pushed to the cold days of November. The pile was a large messy mountain and it was our goal to transform it into neat stacks of split wood inside the shed near the back entrance of our house.
Already two hours into the project, we’d started right after morning farm chores and then voting at the local fire station. So voting was on my mind. I wondered what Hillary Clinton, wildly favored to win according to polls, was doing. I was sure she wasn’t looking at this view. The open space, the brisk air, snow-capped mountains in the distance… I realized Hillary Clinton probably didn’t live in a place that used wood for heat and had probably never done the sweaty work of splitting and stacking wood. Would she even know about people like me? Like us? Going out into the barns and fields every day to milk cows, falling on ice hidden under a thin layer of snow, glasses fogging up upon entering a warm barn or home after chores. How could she know? Her world was so separated from ours. Maybe it wasn’t always, but certainly now. How could she possibly lead a country that included people like us? How could she relate.
But I’d voted for her, begrudgingly. I was thankful that she was female with a resume that beat the odds, given the age in which she was raised. As disappointing as it was not to see my top choice as the democratic nominee, I honestly felt a buzz of excitement at the idea that I would witness the first female president of the United States. My mom once heard someone explain that it was statistically impossible for there not to have been a female president already, if it was actually based on every citizen having a fair shot at being president. So finally finally, there would be a female not only in the room, but at the head of the table. That’s important. We’d had centuries of men ruling, and the turmoil, wars, and poverty that remained made it clear that being a male did not make you more qualified to be president.
The polls were overwhelming in their clear support for the first female president. I remembered the relief at realizing Obama had won the first time. It was a comforting way to finish the first trimester of my second pregnancy. This was the world I wanted to bring a baby into!
That “baby” was now 8, and she had a 1 year old sister. These girls needed a female president.
Late that night, nourished by food we’d raised on our farm, with the youngest baby snuggled up against me, I kept refreshing my phone. Hillary was going to win. A goofy satisfied grin ironed itself straight and I felt my eyebrows squish together. Hillary seemed to be losing ground, according to the results coming in. It was midnight, and I really needed to sink into sleep. The cows would need milking in the morning, water hauled from the pond because the hose lines would no doubt be frozen in the morning.
At 1am, Hillary had lost more of her lead. I couldn’t keep watching. No way could she lose. That was impossible. Everyone knew the opposing candidate was incompetent and kind of a joke. I couldn’t stay awake any longer. This was silly. Me watching wasn’t going to change anything. It would all be sorted out by morning.
I forced myself to put the phone away. Snuggled down with the baby, my husband already snoring gently on the other side of me. I reached over and turned off the bedside lamp. It would all be okay in the morning, I thought.
