Politics in the Home

Image Citation:

Thanksgiving with Extended Family. Digital image. Shutterstock. Monkey Business Images, n.d. Web. 5 Jan. 2016.

The chair scrapes back and my aunt stands up. She towers over the rest of the table, her five-foot-two-inch figure imposing everybody else’s seated bodies. Her gaze is stormy, which is unlike her. She is the kindest person I know, but people’s conflicting political affiliations can cause even the purest saint to let their hidden demons surface.

“I refuse to vote for somebody who’s going to allow more people to be shot!” she thunders.

My father sighs, as if this was a regular occurrence, for her to broadcast her political opinion as forcefully as this. “We’ve been over this, Rita. Gun freedom protects us Americans as a whole. We can protect ourselves and our families from –”

Aunt Rita interrupts him. “Where do the people behind the shootings get their guns? Gun freedom allows everyone, psycho or not, to have a gun. And those psychos, they choose to use their guns that the government allows us to have to kill ‘us Americans as a whole’!”

My father’s eyes darken, letting us glimpse the beast of anger hiding inside. He stands up too, dwarfing Aunt Rita. He doesn’t open his mouth, just lets us see the force of his opinions hiding just behind the veil of his eyes. The end of the table he is seated at cowers behind his glare, offering silence, but the other end of the table is still emphatically engaged in arguing, this time discussing gay marriage.

So much for enjoying a happy Thanksgiving dinner as a family, I think. I push away my chair silently from the table. Nobody notices; they’re all too busy engaging in the same argument. Somehow, somebody brings up the topic of Euthanasia, and their conversation gets even more heated. I start to creep up the stairs to my room, and stop when I hear the door slam.

I peek down at the dining room through the wooden stair rails, unease running in my blood, and try to find who had left. There’s Grandma, Aunty Jane, my other Grandma… Where’s Uncle Dylan?

This realization is somewhat startling to me. Uncle Dylan and my father are best friends as well as brothers. I hate it when people argue, but this is getting ridiculous. This is why politics are always a taboo subject at my house.

I deem it safe to go back to the dinner table to finish my turkey and potatoes. I sit down and poke at my food. The table is uncomfortably quiet – at least until my mother leans over and whispers to my father, “Don’t you think you were a little harsh on Dylan?”

He stands up and leaves.

My mother gives an awkward smile to the people still seated and says, “I’ll go talk to him.”

Slowly, my family comes up with excuses.

“I need to feed my dog.”

“I have an upcoming audit at work, I need to prepare.”

“My friend needs a ride.”

Now it’s just me sitting at the table, surrounded by empty chairs.

I am about to get up and leave when the door opens. It’s Uncle Dylan. He walks, muttering to himself. “Even if we’re always arguing, we’re still a family, we support each other,” he mumbles. He looks up and sees me sitting at the table, and only looks vaguely surprised to see me sitting alone.

“Where is your father?” he asks.

I shrug, “I don’t know.”

“Can you take a message?”

I don’t reply. He accepts that as an affirmative answer and continues, “Can you tell him that I’d like his approval, but even without it, I’m still going to run for President? Thank you,” he says, and leaves.