The Uneasiness of Division and Unity Concurrent

I’ve been thinking a lot about my grandparents lately. Perhaps I’m getting old enough to see passing time actually turn into history. I’m also trying to remember that the strident and divisive discourse in American life these days is really nothing new, frustrating as it is.

What’s the correlation?

If I hadn’t been related to the parents of my own mom and dad, I don’t think we’d have known each other. Their worlds were completely different from mine. All four of them were staunch Republicans, life-long residents of rural areas and small towns. One of my grandfathers was a terrible racist. My mother’s father and step-mother, the pair I was closest to growing up, were appallingly myopic. If it didn’t conform to their central Nebraska worldview, formed in the 1920s and shared by everyone of their daily acquaintance, they didn’t understand it, couldn’t tolerate it, and were not interested in learning about it.

My maternal grands were nice to me when I was young. I visited them on their farm a couple times a year and enjoyed exploring the woods and dilapidated old buildings in their barnyard. I particularly loved hearing their stories about the old days.

My grandfather’s family came over from Germany in the early 1900s. He taught his parents the English he picked up at the country school. The family suffered when World War I came along and the community ostracized them for resembling the enemy. Grandpa could never relate this experience to that of the Mexican immigrants who came to work in the local factory in the 1980s. Instead, he said, the Mexicans brought crime and took jobs away, and they didn’t even speak English!

It wasn’t just ordinary racism that enflamed their prejudice. When I told them I had enrolled at Nebraska Wesleyan University, Grandma nearly had a stroke. “But that’s Methodist,” she cried, barely spitting out the next part. “They have Bishops!” I hadn’t realized that Methodist and Catholic were practically the same to these people. How could I tell them I was queer?

While my parents struggled for a while and then came to accept, even celebrate, the fact that I was gay, my grandparents were unable to acknowledge it even enough to deride it. The best they could do was politely ignore what was perfectly obvious.

I never gave them the courtesy of pretending I was anything but what I was. I even pushed it into their faces a few times; once by bringing my boyfriend with me on a visit and sleeping in the same bed with him. Grandma’s only remark was to ask which of us did the cooking, since we were both men.

Over time, I couldn’t tolerate their intolerance. All their information came from other ignorant people and conservatives like Paul Harvey (sort of the Rush Limbaugh of the day). When my mother finally forced the issue and they still wouldn’t discuss my real life, we became estranged. I didn’t speak to my grandfather for 15 years until the month before he died. His only question for me after a decade and a half was, “What kind of car do you drive?”

And yet, I respect these people. They embodied some of the best Midwestern characteristics which I try to exemplify myself: common sense, practicality, and independence. These people lived history: immigrating to America; the worst of the great depression and dust bowl; the dawn of rural electricity, telephones, and indoor plumbing; and prohibition (Grandpa claimed to have followed bootleggers, unbury their whiskey, and reuse the bottles). Perhaps there was so much change in their lives that they lost all tolerance for change later on.

Though they are dead, I continue to struggle between respect for and anger towards them. How can I admire someone who hates Mexicans and rejects me personally? How can I rage against people whose practical temperament I emulate?

It’s the same struggle I observe in our national life. We seem so divided. Republicans simply will not compromise because their only goal is to oust the Democrats. Progressives, on the other hand, debate with each other to the point of powerlessness.

It’s something of a comfort to know that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were the best of friends before differing beliefs caused many decades of estrangement. But both loved their country, and that country survived those early years of national division and bitter partisan politics. The two men reconciled late in life.

Does the uncompromising character of Americans from John Adams to my grandmother to me mean that we can’t live together? Or does the tension somehow keep us moving forward? No answers here, but I’m sure plagued by the questions.