The campaigns were wrapping up, finding fellowship in backyards. These meetings are the last intimate push of wrapping up a candidate's stances with a neat bow, avoiding that life is thrown at you in gift bags with crumpled tissue paper.
These garden parties are an event where, if you know a few people, you can wait for the candidate to do their rounds. But I'm one of the people who will make a beeline for snacks or drinks and then meander back to my original perch. As I did that this time, I slid up to a friend chatting with a new person. I jumped in: "Introduce me; I haven't met your friend yet."
She told me she's a community organizer who had helped propel the campaign forward with her team going door to door. I asked her if she's optimistic. She took a beat to say yes, and I joked that I came to soak in the optimism of others, finding almost none in the worlds I inhabit, especially online.
She dodged my question slightly and said she felt hope in the work and her group. She explained that one of her canvassers said they'd feel grief after Election Day, not from the outcome perhaps, but from the fact that after having found a tribe and a cause, their time in that bubble would be over.
That didn't inspire hope in me, but maybe I was the wrong crowd. I'd like it to be the day after the election, as I have for so many recent elections. I just want to know where we're going.
I voted the day after early voting began. Someone had made an offhand remark about how you could never know what might happen on Election Day. She probably meant that a kid could get sick, or you could get a flat tire, and she likely was not talking about armed poll watchers. However, I think back to a phrase a former colleague —who was a linchpin for that organization's institutional knowledge — used to say: "It's good to leave documentation for what I'm doing in case I get hit by a bus."
I did not want to be found by a bus before Election Day.
After the meeting, my husband and I sat in our front yard, drinking champurrado as a cold front started to set in; our state flag whipped against the wind next to our front door. The flag has picked up some tatters, but the symbol it represents is more than just a tribe; it's a reminder of the place where you can find and create your happily ever after. It's happiness that sometimes only comes in short bursts, like outside on a porch with a hot drink, but it's a happiness that needs to be continually sought and redefined. And it's infinitely complex because the meaning of "happily ever after" doesn't look the same for everyone, even if it's where we're all looking to go.
I told my husband that our simple life on the front porch wouldn't be enough for many people. Their happiness looked different, and they deserved to find it, so long as they didn't mandate their "happily ever after" onto me.
My kids called me to check out the sunset spray of colors against the overcast skies. Ours is not a house with a clear horizon view, but my kids climbed up on our truck to soak in the last rays. I voted for them, to protect their right to seek their happily ever after, whatever that may look like for them.
Cassie McClure is a writer, millennial, and unapologetic fan of the Oxford comma. She can be contacted at cassie@mcclurepublications.com.