Posted Thursday morning, November 22, 2018.
Waiting for pie: Tantillo’s Farm Market and Bakery, Gardiner, New York. Wednesday morning, November 21, 2018.
We live in a divided nation. I know this because the pundits, commentators, analysts, and political journalists keep telling me we do. And I suppose they’re right. We’re divided by race, by class, by regional and sectional differences in economies, cultures, demographics, histories, traditions, local needs, and communal and individual self-interests. The pundits and commentators and analysts and journalists seem to think it’s all “political”, as if politics is a thing in itself and something other than the umbrella word for all the ways people fight and squabble and argue as they improvise their way to forming and maintaining societies that best serve everybody’s spiritual and material well-being. And they---the pundits and commentators and analysts and journalists---seem to think that politics is all differences of opinion, and that the divisions caused by these differences of opinion could be smoothed over and resolved if we’d all just sit down and discuss it.
Of course they would think this. The pundits and commentators and analysts and journalists are intellectuals and academics and their heralds and scribes. All of life is wordplay to them. They believe that the way to solve every problem is to find the best words to describe the problem and then find another set of words that best describes a solution, the solution being tautologically revealed by its expression in the best words.
Like I said, we are divided, and every which way, but I don’t think it’s just by differences of opinion---certainly not ones that can be easily hashed out if we all just sat down and talked it out civilly in conversations whose guidelines are laid out for us by the pundits and commentators and analysts and journalists playing word games. I also wonder how much of what’s called political division is actually family dysfunction.
It’s a question of cause and effect, but there are lots of other things that divide families that aren’t in the op-ed pages’ sense political. “Politics” can cover any number of sins and pathologies: jealousies, grudges, tensions caused by stresses from illness, misfortune, and even good fortune---Ever tried to share a winning lottery ticket? Divvy up an unexpected inheritance?---disagreements, large and small, over how to handle problems, small and large, by people simply being people---personalities clash and there are individuals who were born not to get along with each other or with most people. Arguments may contain words that belong in a political debate but the feelings behind them are personal and intimate and often not understood or recognized by the people whose feelings they are.
By the way, those feelings don’t have to be angry, resentful, and accusatory. They can just as well be affectionate, tender, kindly, humorous, and embracing. It depends on the individuals gathered around the table. If you are lucky enough to belong to a family where the latter situation is the usual case, count your blessings.
I was thinking about this as I was waiting in line at the farm market bakery to pick up the pie we ordered to take up to my brother Larry’s as our contribution to the Thanksgiving feast he and my sister-in-law are hosting. The farm is family owned and run and the bakery counter was manned---girl-ed---by four members of the third generation, high-school age granddaughters of the still-thriving and involved seventy-something owners, a mix of cousins standing shoulder to shoulder at the counter to take customers’ money and fetch the pies and desserts they’d ordered from a storeroom in the back where boxes of waiting baked goods were stacked two, three, and four feet high from the tops of several long tables.
At a glance, you might have taken the cousins at the counter for quadruplets, They were around the same age, build, and complexion. The family resemblance was immediately noticeable. But what truly marked them as members of the same family were their identical bright smiles and shared airs of energetic cheerfulness.
Behind them was the window into the kitchen where there were more smiles and more cheerfulness as older women, college-aged and twenty-something cousins and middle-aged aunts, worked to add more pies and desserts to the stacks in the back. An uncle was in and out of the kitchen continually, carting pies hot from the oven on a tray with butterfly handles and bicycle grips to the storeroom where the owner and matriarch herself and her blue denim-aproned sister did the boxing.
This has been a very hard year here in Mannionville and for all the Mannions and their friends and relations spread far and wide. Even so, we have an awful lot to be thankful for, and included in that a lot is you.
People keep telling me what a good job I’m doing, holding things together and keeping the ranch going while taking care of Mrs M. I don’t feel like I am. What I feel is lucky.
Every day I find a new way I’ve failed, something else I’ve screwed up or missed or let drop. Every day, all day, I think I won’t make it through until bedtime. Every night I go to bed dreading morning. I keep telling myself that many people have it worse, much worse, and they keep going. But I take that to heart more as admonishment than inspiration. What keeps me going, besides Mrs M’s cheerfulness and bravery and the Mannion guys’ help and pluck, is your kindness, concern, encouragement, generosity, and faith, which you’ve managed to give us despite your all having troubles and problems of your own.
I am thankful to be going to a dinner where the conversation, even the part of it that’s arguments, will be full of affection, kindness, and good humor. But that’s also what I have here, on the blog, on Facebook, and even on Twitter. Families are the people you’re at home with and, as they say, home is where the heart is, and my heart is with all of you. I’m thankful for you and I thank you and wish you, along with Mrs M, Ken, and Oliver a Happy Thanksgiving, with pie as delicious as the mixed berry and apple one we’re bringing to the Mannion family feast and arguments full of affection and good humor and no words provided by the pundits, commentators, analysts, and journalists!
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