Bracing For Thanksgiving
Last year, when the pandemic restrictions were in place in November 2020, many people I knew breathed a huge sigh of relief.
They didn’t have to go visit their family.
It took a worldwide pandemic to bring them relief.
I get it.
Many people love their families or can’t stand them, but feel obligated to endure Thanksgiving dinner.
In my case, my family was stuck in an age-old loop where my dad, “the king” of the table, held court and actually recited verbatim the same myth about himself, family, marriage, and the nation that he recited every day. It was astounding how boring life was at home with the same conversations happening as if in Groundhog’s Day.
It was asphyxiating.
The recited tropes about family and nation were the worst. My family holiday experience was a textbook example of Wilhelm Reich’s The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Down to the sexual repression, doublethink, you name it.
I moved away from my hometown for college and I never moved back, and the years I was too poor to fly home, I was relieved to be invited to many other families’ Thanksgivings where I had lovely experiences of family and stimulating conversations which was quite a departure to being silent and listening to my father hold court to utter the…
