Letter to my Family: On Reunions, Non-Violent Communication, and Watermelon
August 28th, 2021
Dear Family,
I am writing from Joseph and Lizzie’s co-working space on the island. :) It’s super lovely visiting them and finally getting to meet the baby. I’m also really glad that Joseph will be coming out East for a couple of days so we can have all the siblings together for a moment, although Lizzie and the baby will of course be deeply missed [Note from Lorelai: This was still during the heat of Covid and they didn’t want to take the baby on the plane.]
I would like to say that I’m really excited for our family reunion. I know we do a lot of blustering and arguing and Speaking Very Loudly, but I adore my family. We have each others’ backs and we know and love each other deeply. I have been looking forward to this reunion for months, and literally planned my autumn around it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about family recently. In this world it has gotten easier and easier for us to live in our own echo chambers. At times we may interact with others who feel differently from us, but we can cushion ourselves from their opinions and retreat to our own comfort zones when it gets to be too much. Except with family. It is with family that our echo chambers break down, because we have (luckily) deep personal connections with people who (outrageous!) often have points of view quite different from our own.
I think this is probably a good thing. We are forced to confront realities different from our own and perhaps even question our beliefs.
All that said, I have a request to make. I’m not going to ask this for the entire week, as I am a believer in Dialectical Discourse and Free Speech. But it has been a long year and a half for all of us. We have all been deeply affected by the pandemic in very different ways, and we have a LOT of emotions, fears and frustrations tangled up in it. I would therefore like to kindly request that we have a shabbat dinner on Friday, September 20th, as a family, wherein the following topics of conversation are off limits:
1. Covid
2. Vaccines
3. Masks
I would also like to propose a safe word, to be used at any time (Shabbos or not), should these topics or others begin to trigger feelings of anger, rage, and otherwise unmanageable chaos-inducing symptoms (this goes for both conversation participants and innocent bystanders alike). How about…Watermelon?
Watermelon. If anyone needs a conversational pause, just say Watermelon, and that means that we all pause, take a deep breath, and change the topic of conversation. If the people involved in the conversation would like to continue speaking on it, they can do so later. Alone. In private. Without making everybody else’s stress levels rise, because as we all know, stress is bad for our health.
Okay. That is my request. One shabbos dinner, where we talk about items of general interest and focus on our family love.
Love,
Laura/Lorelai/Lore/Lorie-poo
a.k.a
Aunty L.
[Note from Lorelai: This letter is a year and a half old. I’m posting it here now, just in case anybody is wondering why there are random references to watermelon in some of my political discussions.]
