Every family has it’s secrets, no matter how candidly they seem to communicate. No matter how passionate or brave their conflicts may seem, there are things that nobody talks about. Things that nobody asks about. A ‘Code of Quo’ that prevents the very fabric of the cosmos from rippling. Nobody just comes out and asks if your boy has turned homo, or who your daughter’s shacking up with now.

But there is that uncle that has transcended space and time, and doesn’t give a damn much about the code anymore. Usually that uncle is a war Veteran and his ears are blown out and he’s too stubborn to wear a hearing aid. Usually he’ll take a glass of wine whenever one is offered to him. Usually he’s just been trapped in car with his wife for too damn many hours when he’d rather be home alone in his tool shed.

Usually, that uncle is your favorite because his eyes are sparkley and his stories roll on and on forever like the alfalfa fields behind his house you used to run through as a little girl.

So, last night we sat in the lamp lit living room in a circle amongst the cats with the TV turned mute. My dad and uncle Arlen took a lot of time playfully complaining about the neurosis of their wives, while my mother and her sister blushed and waved their hands as though swatting at flies, occasionally commenting in our family’s secret Yiddish language. ‘So, kinachi he is!’ There was a lot of complaining about injuries and ailments, countered with proven tribal cures like herbs and metals, and then resuming again the lists of physical traumas.

I am young and healthy and a quiet observer in this conversation.

And then Uncle Arlen sets it up.

‘I am writing a letter to the editor’, he begins ‘and I hope it does some good…well, it goes like this…’
He stares up to our ceiling and begins to account his work in progress. He stops himself, and begins again as he is repeating this letter to us verbatim and doesn’t want to make a mistake.

‘There is a lot of talk about the boys being killed today in Iraq, one thousand and seventeen in the past year. However, as bad as this may be, no one is talking about the 65,000 killed in automobile accidents each year. My question is, what are people doing about THIS tragedy taking place in our country year after year? Just like those soldiers dying, these victims leave behind widows and children and mothers and fathers…”

I am quiet. I imagine now that my eyebrows are even raised. This is because I cannot be sure that he is being perfectly serious. Only moments ago a story about his friend’s anniversary resulted in the guy wishing for his wife to be 30 years younger than him, and he turning instantly from 63 to 93. I cannot be sure.

And then he strikes. He pauses and looks up to me and says, “What do you think about all this, Heather.’

My face goes pale, but further more my parents laughing eyes have fallen flat against their cheeks. The room is quiet save for the sandpapery licking of the cats tongue against his fur coat and the goiter in my father’s throat flopping down into his stomach. They know my anti-SUV/full size van/pickup truck rant backwardsforwardsinsideoutandupsideout. The moment of embarassing truth is inevitable, and it will echo across copperwires along the countryside for weeks to come.

Their daughter is a liberal.