An American couple living here invited me to Thanksgiving lunch this Sunday. It’s the first time since election night that I am going to be in a room full of Americans, and a few non-Americans who had been to UVA that I may or may not know (the host and hostess are Wahoos), all of whose sympathies I can expect to be Liberal — there, finally, I think, is the roomful of people I have felt I needed to be with — but I find I am dreading it as much as I am hoping to take comfort from the lunch —  the thought of talking of, or having to talk of the election at all is more exhausting than I care to contemplate at this point (and I’m starting to realise I’m not the only one who feels like that.)

But perhaps that’s prejudging —  perhaps everyone else at the luncheon, just as weary and worn out two weeks on, just as far away from the US in distance and psyche — would be as subdued, as unwilling to vocalise their inner unhappiness, and carefully tiptoe around the elephant. But perhaps a quiet understanding — that we can take for granted in the room an unspoken but common rejection of the new reality– that would be enough. Perhaps we will speak of better things in a better time, and tuck into warm homecooked food at the table, and say nothing and hope. Perhaps that would be enough.