2020 Blog Week 2: Flying Away from my Problems

I have a complicated relationship with flying. I definitely hate taking off. It was during a takeoff in Verona, after a family holiday some 5 years ago now, that a flock of birds decided to fly into each of our engines and the pilot had to slam the brakes while we were travelling hundreds of miles an hour. Strangely, my instictive response to the plane screeching to a halt was to bite fiercely into the book I was holding. To this day, my copy of George RR Martin’s A Clash of Kings has tooth marks. Needless to say the experience meant the whole family was a little iffy when it came to planes for a while afterwards.

But once takeoff is over, and you’ve fought your way through the clouds, and that weird sawing sound has stopped, it can suddenly be blissful. As I write I’m soaring through a sky more vivid blue than any I’ve seen since about September, and despite it still being midwinter it seems as if summer isn’t all that far away.

I can’t say I’m thrilled to be returning to Italy, all things considered. Christmas break has been jam-packed with the things I love most, like seeing friends and that weird Christmas meal you have at 10pm that consists of odds and ends left over from the huge main meal you had at 2. I’ve spent entire days glued to the puzzle section of the newspaper, entire evenings lying prostrate in front of a fire, and I’ve eaten enough to notice a difference in body weight, which is saying something for me.

I’ve also managed to see almost all my family members in these three short weeks. My family isn’t large and perhaps because of that, is generally very tight knit. I recognize how lucky I am to have grown up in the middle of a harmonious nexus, but it has to be said that things have changed recently.

Perhaps I was naive not to realise sooner. Bigotry lies like a latent virus in all of us, waiting to be triggered — I have struggled to admit my prejudice against elements of Chinese culture since living there in 2018. But in the past few years people who I viewed as ordinary, unopinionated, apolitical, suddenly started saying things like “everyone wants to live near people who are like them, don’t they?” That one was my neighbour, a kind and driven lady who is, no word of a lie, a German immigrant. Her statement doesn’t sound all that controversial until you consider it’s reverse — “everyone wants to live apart from people who are different from them.” Suddenly we’re talking about segregation. Suddenly we’re talking about Brexit, and suddenly we’re talking about removing essential rights for the Europeans who prop up our society. Suddenly there is a sizeable gulf between the older and the younger demographics in the UK, and us youths begin to wonder if our older relatives really want what’s best for us.

Now, after a conservative landslide has provided a massive mandate for Brexit, the elder generation of my family have started to respond to me differently. My Grandma, a fiercely strong 89-year-old who is (no, seriously) an American immigrant, starts talking about the EU runnings everything, or Sharia law, or the snowflake generation. When I asked if that was my generation, she said yes. And then after some thought, but not you specifically. When I tried to probe that a bit, my mum shut the conversation down. She said she finds this kind of conversation upsetting, which is true. And I agree — I wasn’t upset, but to get a sense of hostility from my grandma made my stomach feel cold.

A week later, at my other grandma’s, politics is firmly off the table. My step-grandad has form complaining about young people being too lazy to support themselves, although never when me or my brother are around. Instead, my nans world-class Key Lime Pie is on the table, and we’re getting on fine complaining about recent holidays. Abruptly, without a word of explanation, my step-grandad leans over and hands me his phone. It’s a two minute comedy skit, which the whole table is forced to listen to. Ten seconds in and I know exactly why he’s showing me this — the skit involves a poet going to the job centre, having been unemployed for 10 years. When the poet tries to recite one of his poems to prove he’s been working, the job centre employee starts reciting a poem of his own, which ends, get a job, you workshy arsehole.

My step-grandad isn’t a vindictive man, but he is a wind-up merchant, and you’d be surprised how often those two traits coincide. There’s a clear reason he’s shown me this, me in particular — he didn’t share with the group, he handed the phone across the table to me — but I want to hear him admit it. In this situation there’s no real good way to respond: if you say nothing you’re letting someone bully you, and if you do respond or get annoyed, well, you’re a triggered snowflake. So i waited for the video to end and asked him, why did you show that to me? He said just thought you’d be interested, didn’t make eye contact. My brother says because you’re the poet, helpfully. My parents don’t say anything. The moment passes.

Later, in the kitchen and away from my uncle, I ask mum, do you think that video was targeted? She disagrees, but says it was weird.

In the car on the way home, I’d essentially forgotten about it when Dad waves at me to take out my earphones. He asks if I thought there was something deliberate and targeted about the comedy skit, and when I say, definitely, he’s a little confused. He says repeatedly that my step-grandad hasn’t done things like this before, I say repeatedly that he has. Last time it was a joke about how all Corbyn supporters are idiots. It takes a lot of discussion before they’re convinced, and suddenly, dad’s annoyed. He wants to say something, but admits he’s not great at confrontation. Mum is furious at the idea of him intervening in her (strained) family politics. I suggest that perhaps I can just opt out of the next family gathering, but mum takes that as me destroying my relationship with my grandma. Perhaps it would be, but this seems like victim-blaming to me. Mum cares deeply for me, but she just can’t stomach another round of family dispute. Easier to just grit our collective teeth and bear it.

Of course, I’d be happy to fight my own corner, but that’s not an option. It probably wouldn’t change anything. My brother often talks about how to get people to listen to you, and the need for compromise. But the fact is, compromise with a bigoted ideology is complicity with a bigoted ideology, and I don’t mean to be funny, but being non-confrontational and changing the subject hasn’t worked either. I can’t help but feel that decades of laughing off the occasional prejudiced comment at Christmas dinner has engendered a society where racism and intolerance are not only tolerated, but are beginning to be accepted. We’ve excused them for too long, and now it might be too late.

I want to shout at them, do you not understand what they’ve done to us, what Brexit and five more years of conservatism will do? But I don’t — I can’t upset my mum any more. And so the trail of excuses continues.