How some families handled Thanksgiving this year: Avoid politics. Here’s how I came to realize that might be for the best.
By Mitchell Eubank
After an election which left both parties reeling,I was looking forward to talking to my family about everything that was going on when everyone was going to be together again, during Thanksgiving. I admit it may have been an unusual choice. I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with politics for the past ten years. But this campaign left me addicted in a way most deaths attributed to drugs and alcohol go, and my mother wouldn’t let me go out like that.
She gave me a firm no. The 2016 election lasted 604 days – approximately eighteen months – and she was burned out. When I told her my plans for this story, she said “[they were] out of the question, [especially after] how communications [in general] broke down [en masse] after the race had been called.”
Mothers worry too much. But we mutually agreed that politics didn’t belong in family gatherings. While Republicans in Congress would be quick to call this an act of martial law, my mother and I would fancy it a temporary truce. Either way, the pact was made in time for my parents and I to book three Thanksgivings over fall break: one on Thanksgiving with the paternal side of the family, a second at home with my parents on Black Friday, and the last set for Saturday afternoon with the maternal half of the tree. This was not due to irreconcilable political differences, but because of my extended family.
Still, I wondered whether, given everyone’s passions about the subject, we’d be able to stick with that sentiment. Several had newspapers reported that Thanksgiving dinner would not be as happy as it was in previous years. Would mine be one of the cheerful ones? I guess I’d see.
My parents and I were the first to arrive at Aunt Phyllis’s house. Her dinner involved a small gathering of family members who lived close to us. Said members passed for Norman Rockwell characters – harmless, yet honest. One caught my attention by wearing a red, white, and blue American flag trucker cap. It was Americana in one image: A hard-working family settles down for a well-deserved reward.
I was unable to interview Phyllis because of how busy she was preparing her meal. She did, however, explain to me that “Thanksgiving is a means to talk about the past with people we love in the present, while preparing for a newer, brighter future.” This didn’t stop some guests from calling Phyllis out for saying that with carving knife in hand, but I digres.
My second dinner was an at-home affair with my parents. A brick house in Spotsylvania was our home for twenty years.
My mother Tammy usually provides a hearty meal to cleanse everyone’s palates, or we order take-out from a local eatery of my choosing. Now, though, it was Black Friday – when local hospitals take care of injuries the patients brought upon themselves – and Tammy pulled out all the stops for her buffet spread.
It was nice to spend a few moments with them, thanking them for all they’d done for me.
My final dinner was at the Wheeler estate near Lake Anna. The guests this time were kinder and more light-hearted. Among those there were my Aunt Leanne and Uncle Jeff, the former both a secretary and administrative assistant for the Lake Anna Power Station; my grandfather Wade, a next-door neighbor to the Wheelers as long as I can remember; and the hosts, the Wheelers themselves.
I did not panic during the evening’s affairs, even after Bailey, the Wheeler family dog, stole a piece of bacon and “buried” it underneath one of the couch’s pillows like a drug addict snorting lines of cocaine. Both Jessie and my younger cousin, Jenny, read my body language all too well after that, and humored me by asking to be “paid” for their interview.
Jenny said “[I had] to pay [her] thirty dollars for every half-hour” I had with her, and Jessie responded by “[warning her] that these interviews were for profile pieces, [which forbade] her from anonymity in the final edits of the story.” Once again, comedy was just what I needed; a few minutes later, it would also be the source of what I did not want to hear that week.
When talk turned to my journalism class, there was a major hiccup in the original plan.
“The media [ignored Donald] Trump’s campaign, and look at them now,” my cousin Jessie said. It was a miracle the crowd of family members continued to eat uninterrupted once Jessie said that; with everything they went through, they needed a break, and nothing, not even fear of the unknown other, could tear their bonds apart. I needed to see this image after the shock Jessie gave me, and I’m all too grateful that I did.
Overall, people can have happy Thanksgivings without politics. This doesn’t apply to everyone, as I learned when talking about it with my classmates, but my mind’s cleared up, I’ve regained my self-confidence and trust in others, and I’m ready to face the world head-on, with no regrets. In short, this Thanksgiving is much like my life, as – to quote the character of Angel from the musical, Rent – it always looks like another case of “today for you, [and] tomorrow for me.”