Over here, in the midst of all this life stuff, we're inviting some family for Thanksgiving, to celebrate harvest and closeness and life. It's by the skin of our teeth, but he really wants and I want. Our kids all very much want. And it's next to impossible to get bigger family together, or manage to go visit.
So we're carefully planning and trying to distribute the work evenly, instead of doing that thing we all end up doing, of doing so much extra, because that simply is no longer possible. Which is why more of us stop trying to pull this off.
To make things easy, I text everyone, asking 'Can you prepare this and this? ' and 'Can you bring that and that?' as we carefully map out how to pull this off once again.
One of my kids asks if they can come a few days early, and offers to help clean and do prep. I ask all four if they can come a bit early to do all the food/people arranging ,once people get here. It seems good. Simple. Possible.
Some have to leave early for a second gathering, so it needs to be boom boom boom. But nice. Easy peasy.
We plan on everyone helping do the dishes after, instead of being left with the job. It seems solid.
Today I get a reply, saying one person, bringing 1-3 others, doesn't really like the two root vegetable dishes I asked them to prepare, and they want to bring one other dish they like better, instead.
I'm thinking 'Thank the Lord more people didn't respond with only wanting to bring what they like. What would we do?'
In my haze, I imagine first asking everyone what they like, then what they'd like to bring, then figuring out how to do the work ourselves, to have the basics covered too.
Somehow I can't fathom preference being the most important factor, when coming together, when it has not been possible for so long. When who knows who will have the energy to bring us all together again.
But then I realize the funny things we humans all do, in response to emotional processes.
Sometimes we dig in or insist upon something, in lieu of something else, we know not what. Other times we differ from each other, in our absolute priorities.
And I remember that sometimes I and you and others get riled up by the past, and generate a response that just may belong in the past, too.
I sit with it. I feel how little room I seem to have for these complexities. Skin of teeth.
I think of how unhelpful it is to avoid. To pretend. To act like its peachy when it is not. And too, how helpful it is to simply be with what is. Just keeping it simple.
Then I get it. That it works for people to be themselves and for us to ask if that or this is possible for them.
I realize I can simply reply that we're asking people to bring enough dishes to have things covered, because we can't cover the extra this year. We've divided up all the basic harvest dishes. If they are able to make those things and want to add their fave, that would be helpful. And if they don't, let me know, and I'll see who else can add them.
I know everyone in my whole family would shy away from the whole deal of talking about some funny glitch like this. Potential conflict. They would eat the extra work. For some, the grudge would be assimilated. The resentment tendered. Ugh.
But I don't want to shy away anymore. I don't want to make a big deal where here is none, I don't want to avoid conflict. I don't want to carry more grudges than I already heft. And I just don't feel like living my life compounding assumptions about others, that freeze frame them into some simplified characterization.
It's kind of cool how there is no right and wrong. We can go for the outcome we want. The relations we want.
We can accept who each other seems to be, what with all our stinky human tangles and momentary lapses and all.
That we can say " I see what you want to do. Let me know if you could manage this too, or not. We will be this many people."
And then embrace it. Let it go. Say to ourselves "Yeah, here is this process."
And then move on to this delicious brazen moment we have been given.
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