I don’t care.
Yeah, I’d have been happier supporting Ted Cruz but I understand the voter’s inclination to wash their hands of the useless party.
For forty years, I’ve been supporting the so called Right and what have I gotten for it?
I may as well have voted for the left in every single election of my life.
I don’t care.
Last week, Jay and I went to a fundraiser for a wonderful charter school here in town. Founded just a few years ago by a young lady we were fortunate enough to meet at that time, the school is dedicated to helping a segment of kids in the city for whom the public schools just aren’t offering enough. Sometimes homeless, sometimes parentless, these are the kids who arrive in kindergarten unfamiliar with the alphabet or numbers and quickly fall behind. They need more structure, discipline and individual attention than your average five year old.
At this school, the kids wear uniforms. They are taught manners and values as well as reading, math and science. They are taught to shake hands and introduce themselves. Rather than being taught to think only of their own feelings, they are taught to respect others. The five core values the school seeks to instill (and from what I’ve seen, is succeeding with flying colors) are knowledge, conscientiousness, integrity, compassion and respect. Armed with these values, these scholars won’t be needing any safe spaces or trigger warnings when they get to college.
I wish I were rich. I wish I could write a check for thousands of dollars to this school. I wish all schools were free to do the things this one does for its scholars. I wish there weren’t so many children out there who need a school like this to give them the safety, structure and security these kids only find at school.
But the world is what it is.
When we arrived at the banquet, we were greeted at the door by five or six of the kids, dressed in their uniforms. They approached, hands held out to shake, introduced themselves by name and as scholars at their school.
One of them was a boy I’d met two summers ago. Friends had brought him to our house for an afternoon and cookout. He and I baked cookies together. I haven’t spoken to him since. Now, when you’re seven years old, two years is a very long time. I didn’t expect him to remember me at all but when he offered me his hand, he said “Mrs. Pivec! I don’t remember your name.”
I hope to have the chance to elect that young man to office someday.
Or maybe not. I’d rather he did something useful with his life.
A few days later, I went out to Ty and Megan’s place for dinner. I arrived in the afternoon. It was a gorgeous, sunny day. On the property, their five apple trees were in full bloom. Four crab and mock crap apple trees and one true apple tree, making the yard look like a wedding party with a bride and her attendants in shades of red and pink. The lilac bushes hadn’t yet bloomed but in a day or two, purple will added to the mix. The property looked so pretty, I felt like I was in a chalk painting out of Mary Poppins.
Megan and the kids were busy building a mall fire pit. Then the kids and I crawled between three enormous evergreens where the two sides of the horse pasture meet. Under those trees was enough space for a very cool fort. Megan and I took some loppers and removed some of the dead branches, hollowing out a bigger, higher space for the kids. They now have a secret fort in the backyard, large enough to put some chairs and a table, if they want. It’s still hidden enough so that even if folks were gathered around the fire pit, they wouldn’t know the kids were ten feet away, camouflaged by the thick branches.
We had dinner up on the deck as the sun set. I saw wild turkeys running across the newly planted corn field west of the house. As we cleaned up after eating, a family of deer bounded across the field from one stand of woods to another.
Cue the birds to come and do the dishes and braid our hair!
The next night, I got a message from one of my sisters: a girl who grew up with us, was my sister Katie’s first best friend and whom I had spent three years nannying, had suffered a stroke and died.
She was only 45 years old. She left behind four teenage children, a husband, sisters, nieces, nephews and parents who are in shock.
So no, I really don’t care that it looks like my choices for president will be an orange haired loud mouth and a lying, self-serving criminal.
Life is good, life is short and I’m going to hold it in both arms for as long as I can.