My Family's Future Bodes Well Thanks to Its Gentle Piano Heart

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I drove south down I-95, hauling the four hours home from New Jersey, listening to a beautiful piano instrumental on the radio. This is how Thanksgiving went, I thought. Lovely, each note connected to the next, imperfect but in sync.

My big, extended family came together for the first time in several years — my husband, sons, mom, siblings, nephews, aunt and uncle, cousins and their kids. We’re a genetically similar hodgepodge, a blend of personalities, a salad of situations.

We piled into my brother and sister-in-law’s house on Thursday and then my mom’s house on Friday — played flag football and cards, chatted, cooked, ate, read archaic letters aloud, poured over tattered photos, and took walks. All of it played out to the sweet piano vibe that came from the hearts and minds of the people there.

Kindness trickled through the two days. I won’t forget this soon.

We’re a family conflicted politically, each side convinced the other has lost its marbles, and this could have made our gathering a telltale for the future. We might have gone home after the holiday questioning subsequent get-togethers. But raging electric guitar behavior didn’t take the stage this Thanksgiving, and I expect neither will it for Christmas. I’ll dream of this harmonious genre of my relatives and hope it plays for perpetuity if I can have such a thing. I know this isn’t the situation for all families and I hear their sad song. I worry about the what-if for mine.

But I believe my hope and dream will come true if I look at how committed my family was last week. I’ll do what I can as a maestro to guide my family’s sound in the coming years. I’ll do whatever it takes because this Thanksgiving was remarkable.

Oh, there were missteps. They were more interesting to me than the bulk of the family who stayed on the unity track and didn’t bring up politics. These missteps stood out and appeared on stage alone, with no accompaniment, no audience — the rest of us didn’t take the bait. They spoke to silence among emptiness.

It was a demonstration of how much unity depends on — or sits squarely in — emotion regulation. The minute emotion takes over and we can’t control it, all hope of understanding is trashed and our unity becomes a dream for never. This is true no matter what you think, what values you hold, what philosophies you live by, or what belief systems move you to act. The ability to bring yourself to a place of stasis is your beautiful piano contribution to the social group — not to mention your life. Lucky them, lucky you.

Is it luck? That’s a complicated question but “Where do we go from here?” is a good one.

I contemplated all this on the drive down I-95. What does an emotionally regulated maestro do to guide the violins — or electric guitars — who’ve gotten off-key and off-genre? What does a maestro know that she can apply to herself when she feels her insides move off-key? What are the techniques of unity?

These are helpful questions for me. They acknowledge that people suffer from things they haven’t built ability around yet, or from situations that catch them by surprise or are too much for that moment. These questions know that we’re all on a journey and in wildly different places as we convene to share an experience. This is okay, and it’s my starting point.

Nothing is magic. For everything, there is cause and effect.

I think about what I can offer to the situation — to someone I love who is spewing, instigating, ranting, blaming, or trying like hell to start a blazing interpersonal fire. This is tricky and delicate. There isn’t always a role for me. Sometimes the situation is too far gone or too sticky for what I can offer. Sometimes the history — of the individual or between people — is above my pay grade. This might be where I cut my losses and move to triage. How can I help the rest of the group, perhaps? Or how can I offset the raging violins with my own soft piano of understanding? Or, sometimes, how can I simply save myself?

There’s no easy answer. There’s no surefire solution. But it’s always worth a try. This past Thanksgiving showed our family what it was worth to stay on the unification course and let the few who struggled to join our cause do their thing, alone. I saw this happen at least three times. The rest of the group let it pass and didn’t engage. Sometimes just ignoring a slip into an off-key solo is all it takes to get the beautiful music to resume. Sometimes migrating to another room or snuggling heads closer for an unrelated, amusing conversation is helpful. The player of the ear-offending music may notice the group has moved on to a huddle of giggles and they might drop their soliloquy of conflict to see what’s so hilarious.

Have I ever told you how much I adore humor?

This is how it goes with a gathering of ideologically conflicted people who value each other, who’ve spent most of their childhood and holidays together, and who need each other to gather around their deathbeds one day. Nobody else in the whole world knows the group’s lifelong history. No one else has witnessed all the holiday table cacophony and snort-filled laughter. Nowhere will you find that many people willing to do anything they can to travel to your deathbed.

Isn’t a group like this more valuable than anything?

I’m no expert, but I know defusing the negative is possible. Sometimes all it takes is a calm-voiced kind-hearted reminder of the greater objective. Sometimes a gentle, loving touch on the arm is helpful. Sometimes a humorous pivot works or a curious question about something entirely different. Sometimes gently letting them know that you were hoping for a joyful experience that day is the insight they need. There are things to try. There is kindness to experiment with. There is hope.

This Thanksgiving I noticed that the people who think so differently from me did everything they could to ask about me, serve me the food I preferred, and clean up after me. This is how love overrides disagreement. This is how it can be. This is how I want it to be — and my family clearly does, too. 

To my loved ones: thank you for committing to “family first.” We’ll never regret this. Even better, we’ll learn much.

What I hope my family learns more than anything, though, is to eat more salad. I was in charge of the salad this year and discovered nobody eats salad. Guess who’s eating leftover salad for breakfast/lunch/dinner for the next two weeks?

But learning is a two-way street. Steph, sign up for the potatoes next time.

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Have a nice week, friends.