Healing the Nation One Bake Sale at a Time

The local PTA holds an old-fashioned bake sale at my polling place during primaries and general elections. We would all get along better if there were more bake sales at more polling places.

Along with the exhilaration of voting, I greatly look forward to scoring a blueberry muffin or—if I have more cash in my pocket—a larger item to bring home as evidence of a productive experience.

Bake sales take me back to my earliest school days. My mom wasn’t a baker but could always be counted on to deliver the store-bought goods and help sell them for the benefit of University School.

Her spiritual heirs, the Orange High School Election Day Bake Sale parents, are warm and engaging. I was looking for a quick fix after voting in the last primary when I bought my last muffin—and wanted to get out of there before anyone I knew saw me indulging in treats. But the dad I transacted with thanked me so profusely that I also decided to buy an entire loaf of blueberry bread.

This guy did not know who I had voted for—Republican or Democrat. I had no idea of his political affiliation and knew him only as a paladin of the PTA. We bonded over baked goods and the promise of somehow bettering his kid's school experience, one muffin at a time.

We now face a grueling choice between two opposing visions of our country and what it stands for. Over the past year, I have given in to the emotions behind this decision, alternating between hope and fear, joy and anger.

It seems incongruous that the bake sale tables are set up outside the gymnasium where voting takes place. The bake sale area is an apolitical sanctuary adjacent to the locus of contention and trauma. When I think about who I share this country with, I am drawn to the bake sale dad as an example of humanity and light.

Election anxiety may cause me to snap and stress-eat a store-bought blueberry muffin or two before November 5. But rest assured, when I vote on that day, I will buy a homemade one. Not because I need the calories but because I want to interact with people like the bake sale dad and remember our capacity for goodness.