Can I get up in the morning
Put the kettle on
Make us some coffee, say “hey” to the sun…
Is it enough to write a song and sing it to the birds?
They’d hear just the tune
Not understand my love for words
But you would hear me and know
I want only this, I want to live
I want to live a simple life.
–The Weepies, “Simple Life”
(Left: This is my favorite coffee cup right now, from Leaf & Bean. It makes my inner child smile.)
Today is an intense day for many of us. Amelia’s school lobby will be full of voters, as well as PTA volunteers running a fund-raising bake sale. After dropping off juice and cups yesterday (the items I’d signed up for), I received a barely intelligible note requesting I bring oatmeal muffins. The request seemed so random and last-minute that I planned to decline. Then I remembered that I sent oatmeal muffins for the last bake sale, so this could be an encore request.
Well, in that case . . . I suppose I could whip up a few. (I’m up by 5:30 with the girls, anyway.)
It made me breathe deeper when I heard NPR announce this morning on Morning Edition that they would not be reporting on the election today in order to give listeners space to think about their votes. Tonight as results come in, they will resume their coverage. That expressed so much respect to me, a sense of sanctity, if you will.
I’ve been under the weather for a couple days, drinking a lot of cider from the cup pictured above. Before I moved to New York, I thought cider was apple juice warmed up with a cinnamon stick in it. The fresh cider from local orchards is the most soothing thing to me about a New York winter. Soothing, simple things are just what I need today to balance out my anxious thoughts about today’s outcome in the primaries.
A soothing thought for me is that we have more in common than not. I haven’t forgotten what I heard Obama say the first time I heard him speak. “We all love our children the same way,” he said. There is something universal about the human experience. I think today is about hope for all of us, regardless of which candidate we support. It’s that simple.
