Screaming at my Grandma on the Fourth of July: Part I

Screaming at my Grandma on the Fourth of July: Part I

I don’t even remember the comment that started it. The grenade released. The earth-shattering, war-mongering sentence that was thrown into the middle of my safe haven, the place I call home.

To the best of my recollection, it was something along the lines of, “We can just lock all the kids in Central America up in cages!”

It was stated by an extended family member who is hard to love. One who, for lack of knowing him better, has become a familial amalgamation of Trump supporters. Someone who enjoys his incendiary statements. If given a Facebook, he would certainly be the one sharing ludicrous memes and throwing around the term “triggered” for the sake of mockery.

The word-grenade was irrelevant to the conversation. It was thrown out with a grin as he was getting up from the table. It was undeniably, irrefutably, incontestably… bait.  

I took it.

For years, I had done a good job of rolling my eyes. I stayed clear of his politics and in-person trolling. I loved and still do love him. I feel this is important to clarify. I can’t, for the life of me, hate him the way I hate so many others who share his views. Because for better or worse, he has always been tender to me, has always supported my endeavors. He shares my eye color, my smile wrinkles, my barking laugh. Call it sentimentality, call it similarity bias, call it something more generous than the two. But I love him. There is little to nothing he can do that would ever make me not love him.

In a fun little narrative twist, this story has nothing more to do with him.

While I generally ignore troll bait, this comment was different. It was on the heels of photographs emerging of children and adults – humans – in filthy living conditions. Humans who desperately wanted safety and food and hope trapped by our own government. A father and daughter were recently found dead, echoing hundreds of stories behind and ahead of them.

I carried these things in my heart. They weighed heavily on me, occupying spaces all over my brain like ivy. Images, heartache, worry; they stayed with me vividly in that season.

I snapped.

Both trauma and time cloud my memory of that conversation. I remember being aghast, retorting nastily and quickly. I remember my grandmother rising in anger. I remember my voice climbing to a crescendo as I spat the phrase, “I am surprised by your lack of empathy,” to my grandmother. While on paper it doesn’t look like much, my tone made it the filthiest thing I could have said to her. She began to cry.

I won’t share specific phrases from the conversation, mostly because I don’t remember them. I just remember the heat, the anger, the pure hatred lashing out between us. My grandmother is the most generous person I know. She worked in inner cities helping youth before it was trendy. She donates copious amounts of money. She begins programs that rehabilitate returning citizens, even buying a few of them their own house. The woman I looked to as a shining beacon of God’s goodness, hope, and generosity was now bleating out far-right soundbites. The woman who taught me to see the human in ever person I encountered was dehumanizing an entire people group simply because they weren’t American.

At some point in the conversation, my father stood up and said, “Thanks a lot, ____,” sarcastically to the family member who began it all. The one who was now calmly debating with my husband in the corner.

We woke up my child. She cried for me. I stormed out.

Hot, angry tears ran down my flushed cheeks as I dialed back my “fight” response and leaned into “flight.” I removed myself from the home, finding my father and crying furiously about my sensitive temperament and how I can’t have a logical debate about the things I’m most passionate about because I get so angry that I cry.

We talked for a long time, then had an edifying discussion about immigration reform. My dad leans conservative, but he is very sympathetic to the immigrant cause. He’s even hidden immigrants in his home hiding from ICE. He also likes to say, “I married a Muslim immigrant before it was cool!” which, while technically accurate, is still hashtag-not-okay.

Talking with my grandmother, on the other hand, didn’t happen.

We still interacted in a forced and minimized manner for the rest of our stay. In typical Irish Catholic fashion, we shoved our argument and feelings away and pretended like nothing happened.

Two weeks later, she was no longer responding to my emails or commenting on my social media posts.

One month later, she wasn’t responding to my texts.

As someone who desperately loves her grandmother (and, if I’m being honest, panics about her dying any second and oh-god-what-if-this-was-how-we-left-things), and as someone who wants affection and approval more than the assurance of health and safety, I found my way back into her Irish Catholic heart the only way I knew how. Day after day, I sent photos of my baby.

Two months later, she brought me into a new project she was working on, gathering band instruments for students in need. I responded with fervor. She began commenting on my social media posts again. She responded to my texts with joy.

All was well again.

Sigh.

There’s a lot to unpack here, but I think I only have the emotional energy for the retelling of this story for now. I hope to explore so much in this narrative with you soon.

All my love,

birch