A Simple Democracy Need We Can Easily Meet

Saturday, I turned away from the election coverage, the breaking alerts that mostly break our focus, and I cleaned out the basement.

For me, this cleaning falls into two buckets. There’s the easier organization of tossing out brittle paint brushes, gathering the multiple cans of WD40 in multiple different places all on the same shelf, putting the drop clothes into one storage bin.

And then there’s the more tender work of figuring out what to do with old photo albums, broken and memory-laden family furniture stored for the day when someone would be inspired to repair it, supplies for projects that were never finished - or started. And staring down all these past versions of our family’s life started to drag at my heart.

After donating what was donate-able to Goodwill and the Salvation Army, some stuff had no other possible destination than the dump.

I loaded the car, headed past thickets of election signs, and arrived at the transfer station with a car full of rotten and nail-ridden wood, jagged pieces of glass and metal, art that was shattered beyond rehabilitation. And I had a heaviness on my heart for all the life this broken, beat up stuff had once stood for.

A woman had pulled up at the industrial bin ahead of me with her grandson. He was a cutie pie maybe eight or nine years old, in Spiderman pajama bottoms, who was proudly, loudly heaving stuff from the trunk of her car into the bin.

HIIIIIII-YAH! he yelled as he tossed each armful, then whipped his head back to make sure his grandmother saw his heroics.

But the woman was looking at my car, packed like sardines.

JEFFREY! She called to her grandson. You help this woman out with her car.

Jeffrey looked at me, rolled up his sleeves, and said, I’m STRONG! Then gave a bicep flex, glancing up to make sure I saw.

And with that, this little PJ-clad warrior and his grandmother scooped some of the heaviness right off my heart. Someone refusing to let you go it alone has a way of making you just a bit more whole.

I did a quick inventory of all the dangerous objects in my car and realized that I could not, in good faith, subject Jeffrey to the nails and jagged edges.

My man, you ARE strong! I said to Jeffrey. But I’ve got some stuff that’s so dangerous, I need to wear special gloves to move it and I don’t have a spare pair.

Are you sure? He pointed at his biceps.

Totally sure. But thank you, my friend. I am so impressed at how strong you are. And I gotta tell you, like the best superheroes, you’re kind, too.

Jeffrey grinned like a little Buddha, closed the trunk of his grandmother’s car, tapped the bumper covered with election stickers, and off the two went.

So yes, elections are democracy. But so, too, are these moments when we show up for each other. Any time we walk alongside someone, we make our democracy more habitable. A place people want to live in, fight for, repair, and redeem.

Which is all a way of saying that yes, elections are democracy. But so, too, are we.