Family Dinner

Messy watercolor done by me. It didn’t turn out the way I thought it would, but the whale wanted to be seen.

It is dinner time, and we are at the house by the sea. We are eating something my grandmother made, probably fish with butter and wilted lettuce and rice. I am a child. There are hundreds of people in the house, it seems to me, although there are probably only ten, all tall and beautiful and everyone is glowing. We have been outside all day and have taken in the ocean, the salty air, the pine trees and sand and sweet peas and it is all magic flowing through us. My grandmother is wearing something festive, a pink boatneck shirt, a white skirt with big flowers. My grandfather is telling a story about a man who fell into a pothole in New York City. Who knows if it’s true? But you’d better not argue with him, you will never win. I don’t believe him but I love everything he says. My uncle is handsome and can play the piano. My aunts shine like starlight. My mother is laughing her laugh that is always genuine, that forgives everything. My father adores her. Everyone does. She is soft and comforting, plump where everyone else is thin. We will try to help her lose weight, but she will politely ignore us. She isn’t afraid to be big in a culture that likes to make women small.

            It is always like this here. Stories, movement, laughter, lettuce that has given up. A small house full of big personalities. Creativity everywhere—watercolors, songs, old stories, books and games and scavenger hunts. My cousin says, “Let’s write a play,” and we do!

It is terrible!

The adults applaud. Genius! Bravo! A masterpiece! We are triumphant! We can do anything! We will go on to win many awards, we are sure of it!

            Someone brings up The Big Murder. My great great great grandfather who lived in Charleston and was shot in the back by his neighbor, a doctor. It is a horrible story. My great, great, great grandmother never got over it. My grandfather says that his favorite part of the story is that the man who shot our ancestor tried to hide him in the floorboards but he didn’t fit, so he had to stash the body somewhere else, I can’t remember where. My grandmother says her favorite part of the story was that my great great great grandmother dressed in black for the rest of her life and every time she saw the doctor who shot her husband, she followed him, pointing a finger. She was tiny, less than five feet tall, with auburn hair down to her ankles which she wore in a long braid. My grandmother still has it in a white dresser in her bedroom.

“And then he killed himself!” My grandfather says gleefully. “She drove him to suicide!”

We gasp!

“I don’t think that’s true,” says my uncle. The room falls still. My grandfather says it absolutely IS true. And they’re off. People take sides. Voices are raised. Someone leaves the table to find a book. A book will solve everything. Books have all the answers!

I am a reasonable person. I have heard the phrase, “Do you want to be right or be happy?” I know that there are times—most of the time, really, when the best thing you can do in an argument is shrug and say, “Okay. That’s fine. What’s next?”

But I am also an unreasonable person. Somewhere I believe that being right will mean that you understand me. I know that is nuts! Being right and being understood are such different things, and needing to be right is a great way to keep people from understanding you, unless you want to be understood as a jerk.

Not in this family. In this family being right is everything. It means you are good and smart and leading your life properly.

Outside a thousand birds sing and sing. There are so many songbirds alive in the seventies, people think nothing of the fact that cats kill so many of them. People think nothing about burning garbage outside either, la la la, as if the air will be clean forever.

Inside people are still arguing in the kitchen about this century old murder. My uncle has a book. It says that the doctor did NOT kill himself. He died peacefully in bed at a ripe old age, surrounded by his daughters. My grandfather says this book is piffle. This fight is not over yet. There is another book somewhere. My aunt has gotten up and gone into the living room, where she is tuning her guitar. Another aunt has followed her.

I don’t know what to do. I should probably help my father with the dishes. But I want to go into the living room and sit at my aunts’ feet. I look at my cousin, who can read my mind at that age. “Let’s do something wild,” she whispers from her thoughts to mine.

On a whim I kiss my mother. I say to my sisters and cousins, “Let’s go outside and do a moon dance.” We do! We are crazy, running around howling, skipping, throwing flower petals at the sky.

Is it true that we are all children of the moon? That we are all connected by her soft blue light? Is it true that my heart lives in yours and separation is all an illusion? My soul knows this so effortlessly, but my brain still has so many questions. Why is this illusion of separation so powerful, when all the sages swear releasing it would solve everything? No more wars! No suffering! Enough for everyone. Why is this so hard? Somewhere I know that what the whales told me once when I was meditating is true—that there is no right or wrong, only one shimmering moment in time after the next, and all you can do is inhabit each one fully—even when it hurts.

By the time we come back inside the fight has settled. My grandfather is in the living room of this three hundred year old house with his accordion and his autoharp. My aunts are on the couch. My mother is in a rocking chair, my father is sitting next to her. The old mountain song books from when my father’s family lived in the mountains of Kentucky are on the coffee table. We start with The Ash Grove. Music fills this room that used to be a kitchen. My aunts sing like angels, they know all the old harmonies. My father and grandmother are shy and only mouth the words. I sing and harmonize loudly and with vigor! I think my voice is splendid! It will be a complete surprise to me, years later, when I find out that I am often offkey. (I still don’t really believe it, even though I have been reminded more than once.)

We sing and sing. All through the Night. Wildwood Flower. Amazing Grace. Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes. The Titanic. Bobby McGee. I am electric. The light in the house is leaping out of the windows, blessing the grass and the trees, who are listening. So are the birds, and they are saying this is when we like humans the most. We wish they did more of this. Even the whales hear us with their super ears and they bless us with their giant hearts that couldn’t even fit in the kitchen.

Now the evening is winding down. People are getting tired. My grandfather and my uncle are friends again. I say good night to everyone, walking dutifully to each adult, kissing each one. My older sister hates this custom. She is shy and does not like kissing people she only sees once a year. She also hates being told what to do, and yet as we grow older she is the one who will like traditions the most, which I love about her. I don’t mind. I kiss everyone, and this habit will get me into trouble more than once in my twenties and thirties.

We go up to bed, up to the attic room where a shoemaker’s children also slept centuries ago when the house was first built. How many birds were alive then? How many of these trees? Did they sing and quarrel like we do? Did they need to be right until some other sweet force took over?

We settle into the old beds that my great grandparents bought in the 1920s. We fall asleep to the hum of the adults talking, and ice tinkling in the glasses. The night owls are calling. What are they saying? Don’t they know the mice can hear them?

Here is what I really want to tell you. I know those nights weren’t all beautiful. I know that heartbreak and anger and joy and love and everything in between coursed through my family the way it does every human family. What I remember is the way singing together solved everything. I remember how beautiful those voices were, how happy I was when we sat together in that old room, in that house that was built when witches lived in the woods, will o’ wisps appeared by the dunes, and wolves roamed the island howling their one true note, calling to each other again and again, over and over, until wild joy became the night sky.