Coming full circle

On a fine October day, one month before the coming election, I stood in a park watching my son help a young woman fill out a form.

It was only a moment, enough to lock the image in memory. Then I got busy asking folks if they were registered to vote.

I come from a long, proud line of voters -- Democrats, Republicans, Dixiecrats, you name it. They all came to my grandmother's table for Sunday dinner and bowed their heads as my granddad prayed for grace.

In our big, rowdy family, a presidential election was an exercise in freedom and futility, an open invitation to voice any view, no matter how lame, and scratch the eyes out of any fool who begged to differ.

The spectacle taught me a few things: First, people may be willing to hear your opinions, but they don't want to eat them. If you insist on shoving them down their throats, you'd best be prepared for a fight.

Or, as my grandmother might say, never try to teach a pig how to fly; it's a waste of time and it annoys the pig.

Second, if you don't vote, you don't get to complain. That rule was enforced by my Aunt Clara, who was barely 5 feet tall, but fierce. You did not want her to stand on her toes and poke her pointy finger in your chest.

Third, voting was like going to church. You put on your Sunday best and stepped out in faith, believing you were part of something bigger than yourself.

My grandmother, like other women, was denied the right to vote until passage of the 19th amendment in 1920. To her, voting was a treasure, a value she instilled in nine daughters and nine granddaughters.

I could hardly wait to vote, but I had to wait a long time.

When I graduated from high school in 1966, the minimum voting age was 21. My male classmates were being drafted at 18, and sent to Vietnam, without the right to vote for their commander in chief.

Finally, in 1971, passage of the 26th Amendment lowered the minimum voting age to 18.

My first chance to vote in a general election came in 1972. I had missed by a year getting to vote in the 1968 election, and I was not about to miss this one.

I remember it clearly. I didn't dress for the occasion quite as well as my grandmother always had (she wore gloves and a hat), but I put on a clean T-shirt, tucked it in my jeans, brushed my hair, dabbed on lipstick.

Then I took my sample ballot and my 10-month-old baby (I cleaned him up some, too) and headed off to the polls.

"Look," I said, holding him on my hip, closing the curtain behind us, "this is where we vote, and this is how we do it."

It never occurred to me, as I held him in that voting booth in California, wiping drool from his chin with the back of my hand, that one day we'd be volunteering together to register voters in Nevada of all places.

We worked hard, the boy and I, registering Democrats, Republicans, "non-partisans," you name it, and quite a few 18-year-olds, which somehow made me especially happy. I hope they all show up to vote.

Sometimes, in rare moments, life lifts its veil to let you glimpse where you've been and where you're going. And you realize you've come full circle.

I'd like to think the circle will keep turning, and someday, years from now, the boy or his brother or their sister will carry a baby into a voting booth, the way that I carried them, and say, "This is where we vote, and this is how we do it."

They may even register voters together. I'd like that a lot.

(Sharon Randall can be contacted at P.O. Box 777394, Henderson NV 89077, or at www.sharonrandall.com.)