It’s Thanksgiving season, and families all over the country are preparing to come together to celebrate. Some of us anticipate the holiday with glee, our mouths watering at the thought of marshmallow-covered sweet potatoes and cornbread dressing. Others are excited about reuniting with distant cousins, aunts, or grandchildren. For more than a few, settling into a comfy couch to watch football is the real highlight of the day.

But oh, what a danger zone we enter when we pull our chairs up to our Thanksgiving feast. Will someone bring up politics? Or religion? Or, God forbid, Uncle Iver’s recent divorce? Will tensions build and tempers flair? Will feelings be hurt over whispers about the Jello salad? In most families it’s possible; in many it’s virtually inevitable. Where I come from, folks will deliberate on these holiday dramas later, adding “bless their hearts” to comments about those who misstepped. Then we’ll sigh and go on with our lives until next November, when we'’ll bless each other once again with the love that binds our fallible, critical, forgiving selves.

Bless Their Hearts

by Richard Newman

At Steak ‘n Shake I learned that if you add
“Bless their hearts” after their names, you can say
whatever you want about them and it’s OK.
My son, bless his heart, is an idiot,
she said. He rents storage space for his kids’
toys—they’re only one and three years old!
I said, my father, bless his heart, has turned
into a sentimental old fool. He gets
weepy when he hears my daughter’s greeting
on our voice mail. Before our Steakburgers came
someone else blessed her office mate’s heart,
then, as an afterthought, the jealous hearts
of the entire anthropology department.
We bestowed blessings on many a heart
that day. I even blessed my ex-wife’s heart.
Our waiter, bless his heart, would not be getting
much tip, for which, no doubt, he’d bless our hearts.
In a week it would be Thanksgiving,
and we would each sit with our respective
families, counting our blessings and blessing
the hearts of family members as only family
does best. Oh, bless us all, yes, bless us, please
bless us and bless our crummy little hearts.

From Newman’s book, Domestic Fugues (Steel Toe Books, 2009)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!