How did we get here?

This morning, we voted as a family. I’ll repeat. We voted as a family. Not, we took our kids to watch us vote as we have done many times over the years. Not, the youngest drove the rest of us to vote. This time, we all voted. While I was checking in with a poll worker who is celebrating her 89th birthday on Tuesday, Paul told his poll worker that it was his first election. Excitement spread through the quiet folk center.

“It’s his first vote.”

“It’s his first election.”

“You get two stickers.”

And he did get two stickers.

Later this week, he’ll graduate high school. He’ll get a diploma.

After the children -- the “children” -- had dispersed after voting, I whisperd to Chris, “We don’t have any small children in the house any more, and our parents are old.” He nodded.

Yesterday, my parents and I toured the assisted living apartments in Richmond. We saw walk-in showers, emergency pull cords, and a group dining room. Then I came home, drank a beer fast, and folded laundry.

Cue me saying, “How did we get here?” approximately one thousand times in the next week.

Cue me saying, “We’re lucky to be here.”

Next door, we have a tiny baby neighbor. Her parents live with her, to be sure. We ran into Helena and her mama at sunset this week. Mama was walking a sleeping baby up and down the block. Afterwards, I told Chris, “Seeing a baby that young is like taking drugs. I feel more chilll than I’ve ever felt.” Those tiny toes. The quiet rooting cry. Those unfocused eyes that can only see her mother’s face. The world is distant.

Twenty years ago, I didn’t feel the most relaxed I’d ever felt. That decade of no sleep was interminable. Did you know that if your children are 5 years apart and neither of them believe in the concept of rest, you can go for a decade without sleep? I didn’t. I do know. I remember those twilight walks up and down the street, hoping that the cool evening air would bring on slumber.

Solid food, potty training, preschool, kindergarten, trampoline, cats, elementary school, bicycle, chickens, middle school, pandemic, diagnoses, ACT, crushes, dual credit, college applications, D and D, graduation.

How did we get here?

Those sleepless babies voted today. Where will they go from here?