On this date 44 years ago, I cast my first vote for president of the United States.

I had eagerly awaited this date, having listened to discussions about civic duties within my own family and extended families, having read newspapers and Life magazines and more while growing up — I was an “early reader” — having listened to my elders talk about the suffragette movement and the Voting Rights Act, having watched “60 Minutes” and Walter Cronkite and more, having listened to (at that time) very elderly pioneer women who had as single women homesteaded and taught in country schools across the country (most of whom were never allowed to vote in their lifetimes), having watched my grandparents and parents put aside their farming chores to travel to Amidon, N.D., to serve on election boards and vote, having graduated from high school and, at this point, one year from finishing my bachelor’s degree from a state college, and then some. …

My late Mother was a very independent woman and brave. Need I say more? Like any teenager, I was impatient. Why can’t I vote when I am 18? Why do I have to wait until I am 21?

Well, the day came when I could finally cast my first vote for president of the United States. I was working that day, but I knew exactly where I was going to vote — Dickinson High School at that time — and as soon as I clocked out, I got in a line. It was dark outside by then and the national results were already on the news, so we knew the outcome. But I stood in that line until it came time for me to cast my first vote for president.

Something I could never have imagined that day would be that decades later, I would watch in utter horror and shock on Jan. 6 (my late Mother’s birthday) at the same time as my mother, who by then would be watching the news on her TV in Mandan, when a mob of insurrectionists stormed Washington, D.C. I think the first person I called (texted) when I saw this on my screen was my brother, Thomas. He was working when he saw my text and couldn’t quite believe what I was saying was true. So as soon as he could, he called me to forcefully ask me for the details. He, too, turned on the news to confirm this.

Back to my mother: I know who she cast her last ballot for four years ago for president. I know this because one of us (my sisters, my brother and I) made certain that she received an absentee ballot that she filled out completely independently, and one of us personally delivered that ballot to the official drop box. But I will not tell you who my mother voted for because I firmly believe in the secret ballot. I am not a conspiracy theorist (never have been). I am a pragmatic realist. And I believe firmly in democracy. But, as Benjamin Franklin said, “A Republic if you can keep it.”