Blood to blood

When what connects you is stronger than what divides you

We just got back from a long weekend in Denver visiting family.

Altitude sickness is a thing. We went for a hike – actually it was more like a scenic walk – and I felt this pressure in my chest, like I couldn’t get enough air. I was a bit dizzy and queasy and I thought, oh, this is altitude sickness. I’m a sea level girl and now I am actually a mile high.

We cut short the walk, looked out briefly over the scenic reservoir, picked our way through the copious goose poop and returned to our rental car.

You don’t see altitude, there are no visual cues in the air higher above sea level, at least none that I recognize. So, I was surprised when I felt it, like, oh, right, this is a thing.

I got to spend time with people who have a very different view of the world than I do. Some of them people I love. And I felt that same swift surprise at the shift in the atmosphere.

On the plane there was an older woman wearing a t shirt that stated her political beliefs to everyone around her; abolition of abortion was to the glory of God. I saw her have a conversation with a woman near her. The t-shirt wearer handed the other woman a card, they were agreeing, with a smug holier than thou look. Both women were well beyond childbearing age, so they weren’t personally impacted by restrictions on their physical autonomy. In those cases, there’s always a part of me that wants to remonstrate. I know my Bible, and I know that many of the people who are, in effect, for forced birth, aren’t too concerned about the other ways to support life that their Christian God lays out in their Good Book. You know, the parts about welcoming strangers and immigrants, taking care of the poor and the sick and loving all your neighbors.

I live in Seattle, a pretty progressive city, in a state that’s fairly liberal, in spite of the conservative leanings of Eastern Washington, on the other side of the mountains. This trip reminded me that many places in this country have a very different perspective than I do, than my city does. I felt that shift in pressure, the political air was thinner. These people genuinely believe that our country, our children, our future, is better off in the hands of people I wouldn’t trust to care for a dog.

I was able to see some of my cousins, and even though it’s been a while we reconnected easily. Blood recognizes blood in our family, and there’s a deep comfort for me in that.

Our large Italian family is quite divided politically. And yet we get along well. We have a rule that we don’t talk about politics at all when we’re together. We lean on the shared values. We love our kids. We volunteer in our communities. We find things we genuinely respect in one another. We’ve been doing this for a long time, it’s not a new thing. Which means we have the muscle memory, the lived experience, of disagreeing vehemently on politics, and sharing values in other ways. We know how to lean into that comfort of blood recognizing blood, and make the different chords of our experience harmonize in some way.

In any work situation where two people are at such different places over an issue I suggest that people get curious. Everything makes sense to the person doing it. Why does a different approach make sense to my cousins?

But for me to even ask that question and maintain our relationship means I need to dismantle my defensiveness. It used to be that when they voted for a different candidate for President, and their team won, it was like a sports contest. A Super Bowl for America. Parochial, passionate, but still collegial – my guy won last time, your guy won this time, but we were all playing by the same rules.

Now it’s not a playoff, it’s a war. Anyone who doesn’t believe like I do – whatever that belief may be – is demonized. We put all sorts of narratives on one another. Democracy hating, demagogue loving, morally and ethically bankrupt, atheist, racist, misogynist, anti-God… the list is long on both sides.

We live in rarefied atmospheres where we don’t connect closely with people who believe differently than we do. We have self-segregated into red and blue, by neighborhood, church, community, state. Which makes it easier to demonize. Sitting across from my cousins, I can’t demonize them. These are people I love, who lead good lives, and are good parents and spouses and participate actively in their communities and help others in specific ways that I respect. I remember my cousin Eddie, a combat veteran who fought in Afghanistan, meeting me and my disabled son RJ at the Denver airport when the airline had broken RJ’s wheelchair. I was taking RJ to rehab at Denver Children’s Hospital and he was in one of those wobbly airport wheelchairs. I remember Eddie’s face, his distress, and my relief that he was there to help us. Another Peirolo, this one a Marine, helping me, as we help each other, all of us, blood to blood.

Christine showed me old pictures of our grandparents, and we noticed how my grandfather’s high cheekbones still show up in our faces, how my beautiful grandmother is echoed in our beautiful daughters and granddaughters.

There are many complex reasons our political divides have grown wider. One of those is financial. Our differences have been monetized, exploited and encouraged by social media and people who would be in power, who would be richer. It’s like that really old episode of the Twilight Zone where everyone starts fighting everyone else for no reason. Only now we do it with social media posts instead of fists.

Demonizing is easy. Getting curious is hard. Certainly, being demonized is never going to encourage anyone to get into the kind of substantive conversations that bring people together, that change minds. Because in our family, we do change our minds, we do listen to each other and shift sometimes. Not over social media, but over bocce ball, over a meal, face to face, with curiosity, and respect.