Over the past several months,  I gathered some unused vacation hours from my day-job. I used some of this time in the entire past week and the past two days.

You guessed this right. I couldn’t spend this time going to Bahamas to escape the often cold and rainy weather here. Instead I went into the neighborhood talking to the neighbors.

The election was over last night. This morning, at our family breakfast table, my 6th grader son, Samir asked me a question that I’ll probably remember for a long time to come,

“.. so you’ll be going back to normal life today?”

Now that question gave me a pause.

I knew where Samir was coming from. Last few days have been very hectic for the entire family – call this a marathon “full time” campaign job.

I tried to engage them in the campaign work with me – so that they don’t get bored. My wife prepared a bunch of packets filled with campaign literature for the prospective voters. My first son Arif, who helped design this website and the campaign flyers, helped me in organizing the GoTV (Get Out The Vote) stuff with his college friends.  Samir opted to go with his candidate dad in the field to do the knock-and-talk work. I found him excited when he saw someone positive buying into his dad’s campaign platform, however, I saw that excitement occasionally fading away with not-so-positive response from the voters. I think, at the end, he did a pretty good job in accepting the hard reality in life – the polite rejection. He was probably relating our citizens’ “democratic choice” with the win-win principle his teachers often try to teach him at his school’s many competitions – “you’re always a winner, you only lose when you give up trying”

I’m glad that I’ll get a chance to reclaim the “normal” life that Samir was referring to this morning, but I’m also happy for his enthusiasm of many community works that he often enjoys working with me. He has probably figured out by now that a “normal” family life doesn’t need to exclude the community activism – blending both can make lives even spicier.