This is a meager solitude

When I was a child in New York and I'd walk with one of my parents down to the church two blocks over to vote, the air was as sacred in the voting booth as in a sanctuary. The booth was a whole structure, enclosed. The curtain pulled thick and dark. You were alone with your political conscience (and your observant daughter). The metal levers registered your ballot selections with satisfying, official clicks, not unlike a manual typewriter. They glinted, too, in the single-bulb light. You stepped out, your citizenship renewed through this essential act, not unlike maybe a baptism. You walked back home and the November air was always cold and crisp and clean and good, because this was democracy in action, and toggling levers was righteous.

I went by myself to vote today, depositing first children at home so I might have just an act (just one) of silence. There is no booth, not in Maryland and maybe not anywhere. There is no church. I vote in an elementary school cafeteria. There are no levers. I swipe a touch screen. There is no sacred space, just two plastic walls, not even walls, wall-lets, reaching from my waist to my shoulder.

I'm a liberal in a liberal county in a liberal state and sometimes I think my vote is a foregone conclusion, but still I go, though it's less satisfying, there are no levers to affirm what I've done is serious and important. I go for duty now but it's a meager glory and a meager solitude and now we stay up late watching the returns and our state isn't a sure thing after all, and even the unshiny act proves interesting and important.