Do you know the Norman Rockwell painting called Freedom from Want? It’s the one where an elderly white couple is placing a cooked turkey on a not-too-elaborately set table, at which sit their smiling children and grandchildren.

It a gorgeous painting, with a lovely sentiment behind it. Isn’t it wonderful, the painting seems to ask, to live in a country in which we enjoy freedom from want, in which we have the luxury to enjoy a holiday dinner with our family? In which we possess perhaps not the fanciest tableware and home furnishings and clothing, but very functional and good tableware and home furnishings and clothing: just enough for health and happiness? And, golly, look at how healthy and happy we are! God bless the U.S.A.!

If I shut off the analytical side of my brain, I feel enraptured by the painting. It’s a monumental work of art. And yet . . . there’s that pesky voice inside my head that’s bringing up a slew of pesky issues. Why are there only white people in this representation of America? What about the Japanese internment camps that were being established around this time (the early 1940s) in the U.S.? What about people living in poverty? What about the Native Americans? What about all those Thanksgiving dinners during which the adults argue about religion and politics and complain about one another and get drunk and violent, as the children break things and hurt themselves and bully the littler kids to tears? What about people who are alone on Thanksgiving? What about the turkey that died to make this idyllic dinner possible? And on and on and on . . .

I had a similar double-sided reaction to reading the novel Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. This passage, in particular, in which a man describes his wife, makes me cringe:

“She was miraculous. Her body, like his, was always thinking for her, but in a different way, shaping the children, or moving ahead of him into any room to change the atmosphere there to fit any particular mood he was in.”

Yikes! He mindlessly walks into rooms, as she bustles around nurturing the children—without his help—while also reading his mind and making things perfect for him? Bring me a bucket or an airline bag!

To be fair, this novel was written in the 1940s and 1950s, before the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s began. Furthermore, to be fair, there are real, biological differences between men and women (on average, I hasten to add, with a wide and beautiful variation among individuals).

However, living in the 2010s as I am, I can’t help noticing threads throughout this novel that I would classify as overly sentimental and of narrow cultural scope. Of particular concern to me are the strict gender roles depicted, the pervasive nostalgia that (by definition) elevates the past to a greater glory than the present, and a disconcerting (in light of the politics of the present century) nonintellectualism that elevates “how things have always been done” over new ideas (which may or may not be good ideas, but should not, in my opinion, be discarded simply because they are new).

And yet . . . the compulsion to analyze everything can be oppressive. In truth, sometimes things are idyllic. There are rare occasions when the family is gathered and healthy, when Aunt Sue and Uncle Robbie have come to an unaccountable truce, when the children are excited about the flakes of snow and the picture books, when everyone is warm in both senses of the word and making jokes that are actually very funny, when everyone is enjoying hot cider mixed with various other ingredients, when Grandma’s old-timey recipe is out on the counter; and then you open the oven and carefully pull out the rack, and the turkey is perfect, just perfect.

And for decades, you cherish your memory of that one uniquely miraculous holiday gathering.

Happy Thanksgiving!

My brother and his family recently moved to my area, which has been a wondrous and unexpected blessing. For the first time in my adult life, I am living near relatives.

There’s a part of me that wants to say, “Go away—you’re encroaching on my territory!” but that’s my self-destructive side. I am not used to having family nearby; I am used to the grittiness of going it alone. I have learned that I am fully able to tough it out . . . but life is tough enough without imposing extra, unnecessary hardships upon oneself.

The better part of me—in both senses of the expression—are thrilled, thrilled, thrilled at having family nearby. And so, I appreciated the early scene in Kamila Shamsie’s novel Home Fire in which one of the protagonists, having recently moved to another country—and continent—to further her education and career, reflects on the fact of her family being so far away . . . as well as on the word touch:

“She touched her shoulder, muscles knotted beneath the skin. Pressed down, and knew what it was to be without family; no one’s hands but your own to minister to your suffering. We’ll be in touch all the time, she and Aneeka had said to each other in the weeks before she had left. But ‘touch’ was the one thing modern technology didn’t allow.”

Of course, it’s not just modern technology that doesn’t allow touch. The word touch has been in use for at least 700 years; however, its meaning of “communication”—as in “let’s stay in touch” or “we fell out of touch”—is more recent, having originated in 1884. In the late 1800s, people presumably used the word to refer to (among other things) communication through letter writing: a more ancient form of technology than digital devices, but a technology nonetheless.

Whether you’re in touch with your family through Skype, as in the novel, or through older forms of remote communication (text . . . email . . . landline . . . snail mail . . . telegraph . . . smoke signals . . . carvings in trees . . . rock arrangements in strategic locations), no technology can replace a shoulder massage, hug, kiss, pat on the knee, or gentle and playful kick in the butt.

When was the last time you were in touch with family, not just in the communication sense but literally?

It’s natural to focus on the first-person narrator of a novel; but if we learn almost nothing about her, how can we? Yet when she’s the central character and the only one present in all scenes and not just in passing—how can we not see her as the focus?

On the other hand, how can we focus on the many people the narrator listens to when their stories, though compelling, tend to blend into a swirl of angsty personhood? Yet the stories of others make up the vast majority of the novel, with only tiny snippets of the narrator’s life and views thrown in—so how can we not see the raconteurs as the focus?

Long before the word focus acquired its modern meaning of the center of one’s attention, it had definitions (which of course we still use) relating to lenses and other aspects of science and mathematics. And long before the technical applications of the word, it meant “fire,” “fireplace,” “home,” and “family” (definitions which we don’t still use).

Now I’m envisioning the focus of Kudos, the third book in Rachel Cusk’s trilogy, as being the fiery heat of the Mediterranean sun. Now I’m envisioning it as being the burning love for home and family . . . and how elusive this is for many . . . and how worthy of being fought for.

What is your focus: yourself, the people you encounter, the fire above or in your belly, your home, your family? Do you have several foci at once . . . or none at all?