No, This Is Not More Post-Election Analysis...

...unless by analysis you mean a thought. And it's this: my earliest memories of election days have nothing to do with politics, but everything to do with community.

It's not the talk of party politics I remember most. What I do remember are the hellos from neighbors, the gossiping in line, the comments from the grown-ups about how big someone's child had grown since the last time they'd voted.

It wasn't as though there weren't conflicts, of course there were.  But on election day, the community came together for one thing: to vote. And even as a little kid, I got the very clear sense that no matter our differences, we were then, as we are now, all in this together.