Families are such funny things.  Find a man in his late thirties or early forties surrounded by his kids. Around them, he is the paterfamilias.  The Father.  The Ultimate Authority (besides Mom).  Now transfer him to his family of origin and watch him interact with them.  There he’s not recognized as a dad but as a brother or child and the definition has an effect on his personality.  His air of authority is gone.  Maybe an old squabble is raked up with a sibling.  If his children are watching, they have a rare glimpse of their Dad as a boy, momentarily spinning like an electron from their immediate family into the family of their grandparents. Around the molecules of generations, Dad becomes a covelant bond.

As a writer, Anne Tyler knows this better than most and the idea stands out in her novel, A Spool of Blue Thread.  This is the story of the Whitshanks, another eccentric Baltimore family (Anne is the literary patron saint of both the city and eccentric families) with an recurring, dynamic.  Each generation has one member with the drive to attain a goal above their expectations even though success will not make them happy.  Every generation also has at least one “sympathizer” member who negotiates their way through family frictions and the rest have their own coping skills.  Whenever holidays or family emergencies pull the grown siblings back together we see how much or little they’ve learned about being adults while they were apart.

This story also throws in something extra.  After chapters of seeing Red and Abby function as the heads of the Whitshank clan, coping with their children and grandchildren, a flashback takes us to their adolescence and we see the young people they once were dominated by their patriarch, Junior.  We even see the events that influence Junior.

In many ways, A Spool of Blue Thread is also the story of the family home, a house in an affluent neighborhood that Junior Whitshank built and coveted.  The house goes from Junior’s talisman of success to the legacy Red and Abby will care for and the symbol of favoritism their sons will crave. As the house witnesses each successive generation’s secrets, resentments and hopes, we learn what drives this family and what they need to let go of in the end.

Since the prospect of Thanksgiving is looming, with the chance we’ll spend time with extended family, take a second for the Whitshanks clan.  Remember we are all covelant bonds in the family of Mankind and we all have a role to play.  May your next family gathering be like the beautiful spool of blue thread, that appears just when it’s needed.