a love letter to the Happy Family card
My tarot the month is the Ten of Cups – the Happy Family card. Kids frolic under a gold-filled rainbow as the sun shines in a blue sky. A father holds a mother close; both raise an arm in what looks like exaltation and praise. All are fair-skinned. A clear stream runs through green fields. A house sits in the distance, white walls and red roof welcoming between the trees. Some days, this card looks idyllic, aspirational. Other days, I imagine Shrek ripping the image out of a storybook and using it as toilet paper.
My friend Madeline has been reading my Tarot each January 1st since 2020. This has become a yearly ritual for me, one of only two, I think. The other is a year-end “Best of…” list that my ex-husband and I started with our kids in 2009. These “Best of’s…” are historic snapshots of favorites (movies, hobbies, travel, books, foods, etc.). They are lists that look backward, a record of the evolving preferences of our three boys, often hilarious and sometimes tender in hindsight. Now that our kids are grown and we are no longer a family united under one roof, though, the future of this “Best of…” tradition is up in the air. As is the definition of a happy family.
This is not the first time this card has appeared for me, but it is particularly poignant this time. Over the past several years, all my relationships have changed, blossomed, ruptured, transformed, ceased to exist, matured: marriage, motherhood, greater family dynamics, work, friendships. Through this, I have reckoned with my relationship to myself, and with my responsibility to my relationships. I have grappled with decisions and choices. Again and again, I have crawled out from under stories that make me small, keep me looping, or are at best untrue – stories created for, by, and about me.
I use my monthly Tarot card to consider what is going on in my life in a focused and curious way. The cards do not foresee anything. Instead, they help me look deeper at specific questions as they arise. The Happy Family? Post-divorce, my boys have asked me, each in his own way, to be more open with them, less certain, less armored. Less “everything is fine” when it is not. I am no longer writing myself into a story of needing-to-hold-it-together-for-the-kids. More living, more levity, and more reality can co-exist with my administrative and logistical superpowers.
I am hopeful that a happy family is a choice. While it is not the sparkly or off-the-shelf-ready vision of the card, it can feel magical at times. A happy family is embarked upon at will, with love and with work. It does not matter that kids are grown, parents are older, siblings live far away, or that divorce has intervened. These circumstances are informational, not prescriptive. Something looser is taking the place of my old views of a happy family. We will see where this goes.