The One Thing That Can Save America
-after John Ashberry
Is anything central? One thing that binds us all together? The portable bridge each of us carries anytime a river needs crossed? What connects? Admittedly I’m a bit of a Thanksgiving sentimentalist. Once I saw Christmas fully exfoliated as the gaudy fakery it now is (hyper-commercialized, exploitative, phony, anxiety-inducing, expensive, loud, grating, infuriating, demoralizing, exhausting, etc.) I began to gravitate toward making Thanksgiving the centerpiece of my end of year celebrations. Loyal old Thanksgiving— simple and pure and unvarnished. It’s just a big ass meal and everyone you love and care about is invited and there’s drinks and revelry and movies and football and getting caught up with siblings and uncles you might see only once or twice a year. You can dress up or not. Fancy shoes, sexy boots. Flip flops. Bring a pie or a bottle of $12 wine. Bring nothing but yourself. Stay as long as you like. Pass out on the couch. Reconnect, recharge, put aside tiresome facades. Be yourself. We’ve all come home again. That’s what matters. And the older I get the more important such banal sentiments seem. You realize that banality is like cliches— the first time anyone ever said “six of one, half dozen the other” an audience swooned. It’s only banal because we can't see the timelessness behind the repetition, miss messages hidden in the lines of our own palms. Oh, to recreate the conditions under which a man first said, “love conquers all”. The first time someone ever said "cool" when something cool happened. Fundamental truths lost to the vagaries of language. I'm not so quick to dismiss the banal sentiments anymore. They don't embarrass me anymore. I love Thanksgiving. Everyone is in a good mood. Genuinely curious about people rarely seen. Get caught up. What grade are you in? Are you playing baseball again? Who are you dating now? Gather enough material to add to the little stories you have been writing about them in your mind. By now, most families know to put politics aside along with all the other old, unsolvable dramas. Politics is just ugly and crude anymore. Mean spirited, mostly. Bizarrely identitarian. Can you imagine? Making something as crass, craven and amoral as a political party a major pillar of your edifice of self? I’m a conservative! I’m a progressive! I'm an independent centrist! Once you get to that point, anything goes. Bullies and sociopaths high fiving. Unleash the hounds! The enemy is within! This is Judeo-Christian! It's like certain segments of the country decided to believe that Mickey Mouse is real and anyone who hates Disneyland is guilty of treason and ought to be shot. An epidemic of crude stupidity cocooned around a glowing orb of white-hot loneliness. That’s all it is. The death of decency. A despondency arising from thinking our bridges don't reach that far. That the river is too wide. Comes out of fear, anxiety, resentments, the absence of anything else to fill those private voids, etc. Let someone else figure out the whys. It all just needs to stop. Cue Thanksgiving. For one day at least, we gather in fellowship, celebrating a narrow, shared history, balancing reverence for the past with a yearning glance toward the future. The elders and the babies. The know-it-all kids. The Boomers checking their stock portfolios. The middle-aged Xers fairly dripping with a cold clammy irony. Sometimes, in the midst of the conversational din, the dogs woofing and begging, the fire blazing, cousins sealing bonds in the basement, the middle school kids laughing at the kid table in the other room, it suddenly dawns on you— this is my family, from whence I came. And it hits hard. Don’t laugh. It really does. The origin story of every inside joke ever told. You look around the table knowing not everyone will always be there. That the future hustles in new faces to replace the ones that fade. That it isn’t guaranteed it will ever happen again, even for you. Someday it all ends. I'm sorry, I meant that to be private. My own snapped off perceptions braided together as they come, and then go.
As I get older my perspective has become less parochial. Thanksgiving isn’t just about my particular family. The implications are far broader. This is an implicitly shared feast, everywhere— rural, urban, suburban, in homes up and down the streets of every neighborhood, in every apartment block, in every farmhouse from sea to shining sea. It occurred to me that Thanksgiving isn’t just a traditional family gathering but a shared national experience. Everyone participates. Come to think of it, Thanksgiving might just be the most authentically American holiday of them all. The truest, most honest expression of what we once thought we could be. Without the gaudy overcompensation of fireworks and flags and slobbering over the founding fathers. Nothing overtly nationalistic. No pledges or vows. A completely voluntary allegiance. It’s the one day when I feel most connected to everyone else within the arbitrary borders of this land. Isn’t that what we mean by “patriotism"? And not "patriotic" in the jingoistic sense. Not patria or pater, hinting at a hierarchical fatherland, blood and soil, stern old dad sitting silently in the corner judging us all. (Some nations, of course, lean more femme— Russians and their nurturing Motherland. We Americans have always disrespected our parents, though. We call it “homeland”. Which sounds really, really, deeply, stupid. Just enough phony abstract weight to lend an air of philosophical erudition while also sounding a little too vacuously sinister to ever be something any of us would ever get attached to. No one says fucking "homeland" without first selling off major components of their soul.) I mean it in the patriota (Lat)/patriote sense (Fr)— fellow countrymen. Fellow travelers. Sojourners in a vast wilderness that has never before been blazed. All of us in it together. No longer thinking small bands can wander off and get there on their own or worrying so much about the darkness surrounding the fire you never actually begin the journey. It takes all of us. One small gesture at a time. One side dish kept warm in a thermal blanket on the 45-minute drive over. An extra bottle of cheap bourbon. An old family picture album grandma found in her attic. Which of course simplifies complicated notions of what a nation is— who belongs. who’s invited. who has to leave. who can stay late. who can come back next year. who owes what and to whom. “Our fellow countrymen”. Simple and accurate and kind of beautiful. Everyone you find sitting around the table. Mixed and blended families, divorces, annoying new girlfriends, aunts that aren't technically aunts. Sisters who are just really good friends. Mothers making you feel 12 again. Cousins getting each other drunk. Halfsies and step siblings. Gay nephews. Dickhead uncles. Favorite nieces. Potluck spreads in hospital break rooms for all the quasi-families of doctors and nurses on call. It’s malleable. Our hearts like crucibles setting the melting points of the metals.
On this one day, we put aside our differences, ideological or otherwise, and come home. Poured back into our molds. Everyone knows where home is. Different for each but the same idea. Like toddlers arrayed in parallel play, spread across the room on special mats. It’s all right here. Are names central? Patton, Parks, Formani, Wallace, Gauder, Menegay, Baker, Houston, Clayton. American. But also Jeff and Dave and Ricky and Tommy and Hudson and Tylor and Nana also known as Mana depending on your age cohort. G-Ma and G-Pa. Kathy and Barb. Grampa Charlie. Emma's sidepiece. Brandon and Madi and Maddie and Madison. What we call each other in the everyday sense. My friends at work. John and Meg and Sean and Greg and Jon. Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving. See you on Monday. And you do. There they are. Back again. Coming from quiet small houses in the country, our country, in fenced areas, in cool shady streets, in bungalows and colonials, lake side mansions and double wide mobile homes, back to this place where we intersect again and tell each other all about our crazy happy holidays. Lonely wanderers congealed into families, not quite viscid enough to prevent the series of collisions that gave rise to this nation. Sure, there have been lumps and trials. But someday our collective fate will be exemplary, like a star. A city shining on a hill. And it won’t be aspirational lies anymore. This time it will be for real. Ashberry insists the message was received long ago, but we weren't ready for it. Everyday someone is surreptitiously checking the mailbox. But it’s already here. Lost somewhere in the bottom of a desk drawer. It has always been here. And now we're all waiting for someone to stand up and start reading. We’re ready to listen again. To be good again. Do you know exactly what I mean? The river is wide but the waters are shallow. No bridges are needed. You just have to be willing to get a little wet. From a distance everyone appears to walk on water. See? An angel is no special thing. Anyone can do it. When you get to the other side the first person you see says thank you. And everything inside you that's empty suddenly fills with the deepest gratitude.
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