bittersweet

[maevele]

if I have to use one word for how I feel about thanksgiving, that's the word. Yeah, I'm thankful. My kids are healthy and awesome, we have a nice place to live, and I have awesome friends to spend the day feasting with.

But, the history of the holiday always hangs heavy over me. No matter how we spin it, try to remove ourselves and reclaim it, it's a holiday based on genocide. On being thankful for what we stole, what we killed to claim is ours. And I can't ignore that, and I can't let my kids not know that, so part of the holiday is always that ugly history lesson. And then it hits me on a personal level, what it must have been like for my g-g grandma Rose to prepare a thanksgiving feast to help the family she was married into celebrate the conquest of the family she wanted to have, of her eldest son's father's people. (From what we can tell, her father forced her to marry my white great gr grandpa when she got pregnant by the NA man she wanted to marry. If I think of how that son must have felt at thanksgiving, the bitter gets bigger)


And then on a purely personal level, I get bitter because it was thanksgiving week 5 years ago when my stepdad disowned me. I called to see when to come over, and he told me not to bother, we weren't family. We haven't spoken since, and I haven't seen my nieces since. And that still hurts, actually. It makes me even more thankful for the chosen family I get to spend the holiday with, but it still hurts under that.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

+1.

I am too chicken shit to challenge the oldest generation who expect to celebrate the holiday. When they're gone, I'll be done.

Very best wishes to you and yours.

[jesse_the_k]

And then I encountered this excellent essay fromhaddyr:,

begin quote  Immigrants arrive here for reasons different from those that drove the Pilgrims, fleeing different problems, facing a different future. They are not conquerors with a theology of Manifest Destiny, greeting plagues as a sign from God that they are meant to snatch the land away from those who already live here.

Instead of gifting us with smallpox-infected blankets, for instance, the Mexican immigrants in my neighborhood revitalized East Lake Street with solid locally owned businesses and a vibrant, family-focused culture. Instead of yanking me from my home and forcing me to march at gunpoint across the Mississippi, when my Somali neighbors moved in down the street they introduced themselves and we chatted about Montessori education. My Hmong- and Laotian-American friends, instead of taking me from my parents' home and making me eat rocks whenever I spoke my native language, invite me to their baby showers and poetry readings.
 quote ends