Well, I hope everyone had a good—at least decent—Thanksgiving. Mine was strangely promising. Mellow, even. My family—like most—is complicated. We’re a small clan, fractured into tiny clusters of infighting groups. Alcoholism and clinical depression abound. Every time I’m around my family—going back to pre-teen years—for the Holidays I get anxious. Nervous. Emotionally fragile. Sometimes even just being in the same room as my mother, sister, father, brother-in-law can make me feel suffocated, as if I’m being choked by my own innate fear.
This time, though, was different. As you know: My father is dying of terminal cancer. My sister hasn’t had a drop of alcohol since her 18-year-old daughter (my niece) tried to end her life last May (2021). My 15-year-old nephew is into a Christian Bible group and is obsessed with football. My niece was home from her first quarter of college up in northern California. Both my writer-cousins came, one with his girlfriend and the other fresh from a breakup.
My mom was calmer than usual. So was my sister. My father ate and seemed very happy to be with the family. This may be his last. The reason I always sense the anxiety and panic around my family is because I’ve always felt incredibly misunderstood by them. Especially by my older half-sister (she’s 13 years my senior, born in 1969). She and I are polar opposites in every conceivable way. She played it safe, the conventional game: College, career, marriage, big house, kids. Me? I dropped out of colleges constantly, got my upper body covered in tattoos, hitchhiked across the country, hopped freight trains, chased women and my next drink, and never thought I’d make it to 25, let alone 40, which I turn in just over a month from now.
Yet we’re probably more similar than I like to admit. We come from the same tribe; the same clan. We’re cut from the same genetic cloth. I am much more open about my emotional wounds and about disclosing who I am. I’m an intense man. She? She is closed off, like a triple-locked, dead-bolted door. That thing ain’t ever opening. She’s like Mia in Little Fires Everywhere.
My point is, though: Everyone seemed relaxed. No one talked about my father’s cancer. Or about my cousin’s breakup. It was superficial in the same way it always is: Talk about sports (football and soccer), money, the stock market, politics, being grateful, etc. And yet I didn’t mind the superficiality as much this time. Over the past few years I’ve softened a lot. Some of it’s age, for sure. But it’s also having survived New York City during the pandemic. It’s seeing my niece almost die. It’s caring for my father through his cancer. The gritty, ugly loneliness. Finding love, finally.
The family seemed almost something close to cohesive for a few hours on Turkey Day, as I often call it. Almost like a true unit. Like, even, a genuine family, versus a fractured, barely tethered idea of a family. I might even say I enjoyed myself. Something shifted in the atmosphere, the energy amongst us, without a doubt. Authentic gratitude for our collective survival over the past few seasons. But it was also internal, for me. I felt different because I am different. I’ve changed. Not fundamentally.
I’m still Michael. But there’s been a subtle yet profound shift inside. I grasp now in a way I never did before how love really works in a family. Sometimes it comes at you sideways. We judge each other. We sometimes aren’t there for each other. We live our own separate lives during most of the year. And yet there’s that feeling like we’re all lucky to be alive, lucky to be living this rollercoaster ride we call life. And that, if even just for a few hours on Thanksgiving, tethers us.
It's nice getting older, in many ways. You start to let things go more and more, little by little. My mom is far from perfect. I am far from perfect. We all make mistakes. We’re all grotesquely flawed and weak and human. We all want what we often can’t have. But, I’m learning, if you can let go of whatever you think that is, and you can actually exist in the present moment happening right now, and you can, just for a moment, tap into genuine (imperfect) gratitude…well, then I just might say you could even have a chance at happiness. Even if just for a moment.
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Michael Mohr