V O T E
I’d seen the mailbox on friends’ social media that day, adorned on all sides with gorgeous blooms and tall stalks of greenery, blossoms gently opened at the tops of the arrangements, and, at the top, crown of white paper cutout letters spelling —
V O T E.
I am not an art critic, but let me try.
The flowers were a hug to postal workers,
a beautiful reminder to participate
in this project called democracy,
the celebration of a service that
gives and gives, asking so little,
magical in its daily promise:
to deliver a sealed envelope
from one coast to another.
Tonight, while on a phone banking call to Arizona, I caught Barbara at the store. (very impressed that she picked up her phone while shopping)
Have you received your absentee ballot in the mail yet?
“No, I have not. People’ve been stealing our mail, so now I go to the post office to pick it up there.”
Ok, I answered, I’m sure it’ll show up soon, but in the meantime — here’s where I struggled with how to help — you could remember to check with your county election officials online — on the internet — to track the ballot and make sure it’s on its way.
“I’m at the store, so I can’t” — music playing over a loudspeaker, I pictured her in the baking goods aisle — “I’ll remember, I’ll get it and send it back in. I’m sorry, I’m just — I’m in a store, so…” Ok, Barbara, no worries at all. You sound like you have a good plan.
The trust we must have to send these things into the ether, into the blue box, into the ballot box.
V O T E.
Later in the day, the day when I saw the beautiful activist mailbox on social media, I walked a block behind three biking kids, always catching up to them, and we came upon the intersection where I remembered the post office box was. The kids wanted to stop by a particularly horrible Halloween display, complete with a life-sized dummy dressed as a prison inmate, orange jumpsuit, eyes wincing in pain and teeth grinding, seated in an electric chair. It’s motion-detected for optimum horror. I’m not even going to mention the carefully place roaches and the other creatures climbing the walls of the front of the building. Anywayyyyy, that adorned mailbox was right there on the corner, stripped and cleared and naked. I knew it was the right one because a there were tiny berries all over the pavement, evidence. I was furious.
Look what they did, I texted my dear friend, sending along a photo.
What was the harm?
After I dropped my children off at the playground for my first solo moment of the entire week, I walked my way back up the street. A block past the mailbox, on the other side of the street, there it all was. All of the greenery and petals and leaves dumped beside, not even in!, a trash can. I chugged the 3/4 of a coffee I held in my hand and tossed it into the can. I crouched down and gathered up the reeds and the stalks and the flowers and tried to pick it all up with my two arms, scratching myself all up as I did so. They were expertly tied together with wire and twine and I carried the whole thing down the street, looking like a cartoon character posing as a giant houseplant, or something. I brought it back to the mailbox, and steadied it against the sides, doing my damndest to affix the white gaff tape where I could. This won’t last long, I thought.
My work there done, I walked back past the trash can, picking up a stalk of cotton plant from the ground, one that hadn’t made it up into my gathered bundle.
“I thought it was so pretty.” I looked up to see a postal worker, switching out bags inside one of the storage boxes. “I don’t know why someone took it down.”
I know!, I said. I just had to put it back.
“I was gonna call it it and then I said, wait a minute, this is so pretty, so I left it.”
I shook my head. I don’t get it.
“I know, I know.”
Have a great day… be good!
“You too, honey.”
The scratches on my arms that at first I’d just felt, now began to show themselves as raised and red, some of them were straight lines running over the leaves tattooed my arm. I smiled.
I was late for rehearsal, so I started to walk faster.
V O T E.
*thank you to the artist for this work and the dear friend for the photo on the left; thank you for making ordinary things just gorgeous.
