The American Family: This Thanksgiving

A conversation with your Aunt Harriet

November 24, 2024

Yesterday, the Washington Post had a piece on all of Trump’s picks for the Cabinet. Smiling cameo pictures were side by side with their titles.  Short bios and job descriptions for each followed:

Fox news personality, 2025 Project author, Supports expanded fossil production, Slash the federal government, Defended Capitol takeover, Little or no experience.

I am struggling to find language for this moment when our leaders have promised the shattering of the basic civil structure that makes up this brave concept we call America. If I were a painter I would draw a surreal landscape which is at once recognizable but totally incomprehensible. This painting titled Ulu’s Pants by the surrealist painter Leonora Carrington goes a long way towards depicting the contents of my mind.

Or I could paint a safe place within this landscape, perhaps a brightly lit room carved inside an ancient pine where people will gather around a fire, a pot of soup, a roasted bird, a table.

A fire
A pot of soup
A roasted bird
A table
A brightly lit room
Carved inside an ancient tree 

Thanks to Colin Sullivan-Stevens who kindly whisks these illustrations up for me with mere seconds of lead time.

In four days, it will be Thanksgiving and families and friends will gather at tables made from old oaks and maples and we will build fires in the hearths and hold hands and say grace and pass juicy plates of roasted turkey.

6. say grace: prayer of thanks, thanksgiving, blessing, benediction

It is to this table and the people gathered around the table, both in real time and imagined, both living and dead, that I will look to now for consolation, for love, and in due time for inspiration about how to respond to this promise of the Great Shattering. 

But as I imagine that table, I see the American Family again, some wearing red ties and shirts, some wearing blue.  And I worry for that family, for all the emotions behind those colors and all the possible conflicts, opportunities for disconnection and dismissal those colors offer. 

So, I don my family therapist hat, and prepare myself and maybe some of you too, for that time at the table with your Aunt Harriet who wears her red dress proudly.  Aunt Harriet, a retired teacher, your mother’s sister who goes to church regularly, cares for her neighbors and her children, loves Dickens and makes dynamite apple pies.  Aunt Harriet who could well say grace by giving thanks for Trump’s election. 

The very thought of sitting beside Aunt Harriet when she offers this grace makes my jaw harden, my hands clench, my eyes harden, my blood pressure rise.  I need to prepare my mind and heart for this moment.  What is it I wish for from this meal? From our family time together?  What is it we all wish for?  Connection, care, love of course. 

I am at this moment both a hot-headed Irish woman, call me Kitty, easily triggered by false statements made about Harris or “my” party, a woman about whom her father on his deathbed proudly said, “There’s Kitty, she’s trouble”, and a therapist, call her Kathleen, with years of training and experience helping families and couples deal with conflict. 

Kitty needs to listen to Kathleen:

Kitty, the first thing you could do is prepare your mind for that moment when Aunt Harriet says something to provoke your Irish outrage.  Imagine it now.  Imagine she says what a flaming liberal Harris is and how she and Biden are responsible for the high cost of groceries and all that woke stuff that goes against nature. 

Hold that image, then ask yourself what it is you want to have happen in this moment?  Do you want to wreck the dinner with an argument about the facts here or do you want to find a way to connect to Aunt Harriet? If your wish is to preserve your relationship, then imagine what it is you could say to Harriet?  Could you be curious and ask her what her hopes are for this new administration? How she thinks it will make life better for herself or for her children?

Notice, dear Kitty, what’s happening to your body as you do this. I see it’s getting all riled up, you are sitting on the edge of your seat as if you are a panther about to jump from a tree and land on her head.  Find the kind part of yourself, the part that wants connection, that believes we need to find a way through this that isn’t anger. Breathe.  Soften.  Breathe. Do this exercise every day between now and Thanksgiving and when you say grace next Thursday, remember your intention for this time. 

And, dear Kitty, remember that it is vulnerability that connects us to others and not confrontation and anger.  You, dear Kitty, are too good at the fierce part and not so good at the vulnerable part.  Consider saying to Aunt Harriet something like this: “I hope your hopes for this Trump presidency are realized, Aunt Harriet, but as you know, we share different perspectives on this. The election has been very hard for me.  I have a lot of fear, and I worry.  Sometimes I want to cry.  I hope we can stay connected during this time and respect each other for our differences.  I love you.”

Don’t, dear Kitty, tell her you are incredulous that she could support that villain who makes you furious just thinking about his next move. You feel that way I know, and I know this is hard for you, but sharing it here at this table will only make you feel forlorn and even more disconnected from family.  Instead, take that anger, or the energy created from that anger, and put it towards your work in the community. 

I hear you are organizing local neighborhood support groups for times when storms hit and the power goes out, the cell phones don’t work, and trees block the road.  I believe those are called neighborhood resilience networks.  Go do that work.  Knock on doors. Ask strangers what they need. Connect at that level.   

And one more thing, Kitty.  Do everything you can to promote civil civic discourse in all your work with the Town, with Freeport CAN, with all the organizations you are part of.  I know you resonated with the work of Canadian novelist, poet, and essayist Ian Williams whose work on the language of our relationships in these hot-tempered times you read about in the Substack, Ink, by Anand Giridharadas:

We need to address the deterioration of civic and civil discourse. On the civic side, we speak to each other as if we have all become two-dimensional profiles, without history, family, or feelings. On the civil side, our leaders speak to us, goad us, with incendiary rhetoric. We fall for it. Their inflammatory language combined with the usual hot air we expect of politicians combined with stressed, seething citizens is enough friction to cause wildfires across democracies.

So, Kitty, remember the words of Walt Whitman from Song of Myself when he was personifying the voice of America: “I am large, I contain multitudes”. Open your arms, Embrace the multiplicity of us all.

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I am grateful, dear readers, for your company and kindness. I will try to have something in your mailbox every Sunday morning, but in the tumult of this Great Shattering language and meaning are at times but shredded bits of rags on the floor and I will need time to muse, to sleep, to dream.

May your family table this Thanksgiving hold multitudes.