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It is no surprise that Eraserhead’s cental festivity is Thanksgiving. The family, as a source of horror, has been a staple of surbversive film for post-war America. Gathering around the table, making painful small talk, complimenting beet salad and digesting in harmony has been a source of unfettered anxiety for at least fifty years. But as I reflect on my last few Thanksgivings, I realize that as opposed to horror, the Thanksgiving of the 21st century is almost a mystery. Often the operating question on the minds of the potato eating hoardes is not, “Why am I related to these people?” but more appropriately, “who are these people?” Thanksgiving is now a mystery as we find ourselves in the midst of an inertia called family that is rapidly losing its historic relevance.

I spend Thanksgiving dinner with Mira’s mother’s side of the family in Connecticut this last Thursday. The grandparents were there, the mother, the aunt, the sister, the cousin, and two new second husbands. Mira’s family reminded me of my own except hers actually saw each other more than once a year. I recall hearing Mira’s grandmother say, “what is normal? who can say what is normal?” It was a classic conversation about how strange their family is. I could easily imagine the same being said over tables across America. Every family asking itself if its family was an aberattion, while at the same time settling on the fact that family was family. What I realized is that ‘normal’ has often been decided exactly by the family. That the family has often been the arbiter of normality (such that this arbitration of the status quo was of course the butt of mockery for the baby boomers). But the family that was once the source of horror now looks quite different. Not only because divorce has become commonplace, but also because many family’s don’t spend much time together. Family is strange because often the family doesn’t feel like family anymore. It’s not weird that mom married a new guy, but that you really have no idea who these other folks at the table are. The thought that family is thicker than blood makes the family blood run cold.

Things feel strange when the cultural practices we participate in stop losing their meaning. My family lives all over the country. This Christmas I am supposed to go to Phoenix to see my grandparents and the rest of my mother’s side of the family: the Kirns. Now, when I was a kid we would see each other far more regularly. We would drive to Idaho and all the cousins and aunts and uncles would be there. It was family. But at some point all that stopped. Maybe it was my parents divorce but also the bind between all the aunts and uncles somewhat wore off. We haven’t all been together in over ten years. I imagine this situation is not specific to my family. The way work is organized people travel more. Geographic distance makes it hard for families to see each other. This lack of proximity makes personal affinities more complicated. Family becomes family in name only but the social cohesion that accompanies family (the time spent together, the internal struggles) is unavailable.

So, I imagine that this Christmas I will sit around a big table and someone is going to say “Normal? what is normal?” and everyone will laugh with their anxiety assuaged, because as quirky as our family is, we are family nonetheless. And while everyone looks down at their plate of steamed vegetables, I will think, “who are these people?”

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 27th, 2005 at 10:09 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.