kethrai's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Importance of Not Being Irish I have a confession to make. I'm not Irish. This may come as a surprise and a shock, dear NonScheduled Reader. I'm very sorry. It certainly came as a shock to my mother in law--before the wedding, she remarked to the Darling Husband "Oh, well, at least she's Irish." "No, Mom," says he, "She's actually French and German." "Well, thank god she's Catholic, then", says she. "Mom, she lapsed ten years ago." says he. "Well, at least she LOOKS IRISH!!!!" That seemed to settle the matter. Although the previous qualifications to her version of the truth may well be the root of some of her prejudices against me. I did marry Irish, so I do speak with great authority on the Irish, having a pack of psychotic inlaws to draw inspiration from. And yes, I have red hair, albeit chemically assisted. I love a great deal about the Irish, and while this entry is not intended to be a slur upon the whole, I can say with great confidence that one of the things I've learned over time is the importance of NOT being Irish. If you were going hoofing down the Kethraic Ancestral Trail, you would find on the mother's side, a bunch of German porcelain workers and French-Canadian farmers. On the father's side, a German farm girl and an Anglo mutt, composed equally of parts of English, Scots, (ahem....a wee drop of Irish) and any roving sailor who passed by. I must admit, I derive most of my backbone from the French and the Germans....my tiny, frail, very French, brown-eyed grandmother stood roughly ten feet tall when she was exerting her authority. She had been a private nurse for over forty years--the kind of nurse that when she came at you with a hypo, you didn't ask questions, you just rolled over. And apparently I have inherited my volcanic temper from my German grandfather, along with his face, his coloring, and a small part of his charm. But if you asked me what part of my ancestry I identified with, I'd have to say it is the Vikings. Not that anyone was ever interested enough in our family to trace back THAT far, mind you, but...well....look at me. I'm nearly six feet tall in my bare feet, and require Brunnhilde-brazed battle bras...do the math. The Vikings are a bit of a joke these days--comics featuring those silly horned helmets, fat opera singers. But not to me. I had an evil ex-boyfriend (ah, didn't we all?) who used to pride himself on his Welsh ancestry. I learned a lot about the Welsh over the years-- a little of the language, a lot of the stories. I admit I'm not an ancestor-proud person...the blood that runs in my veins is mine, thankyouverymuch. I generate it, I bleed it. But after one too many disparaging remarks about my non-Celt ancestry, I ended up standing over him, bellowing at the top of my lungs: "THE WELSH WROTE SOME GREAT MUSIC, BUT THE WINNERS WRITE THE HISTORY BOOKS AND THE LOSERS WRITE THE SONGS, BUDDY! WHILE YOUR ANCESTORS WERE LYING DOWN FOR EVERY INVADER SINCE THE BIRTH OF CHRIST, MINE WERE OUT SAILING, FIGHTING, DOING ..." Not many Viking songs remain. You ever noticed? I'm fond of them, those mythical and half-connected ancestors. We don't really know all that much about Vikings, except they fought like demons and liked shiny objects, two goals with which I identify completely. They were people living in tall, strong bodies, like me. They sometimes screwed up completely, like me. They were honorable and brutal. I get that. Hard-headed, practical, strangely artistic in the creation of everyday things. Not very tactful and hard on the neighborhood. In the story of Beowulf--the second, sad part, where he is an old, old man, gone off to fight the dragon with a half-trained boy at his side--they defeat the dragon together, with the use of trickery and cunning rather than power. Beowulf, dying, says to his squire: "Do not tell them this part of the story, that I am a foolish old man dying of his wounds. Let them remember me defeating Grendel in Heorot, a young, shining knight." I have told the story of Beowulf now too many times to count. But I respect his wishes. I end the story when he is a hero, sailing away after defeating the monster, young, tall, and strong. I don't decry the offerings the Irish bring to the table. There is a certain mystique about the Irish--especially in the Renaissance Faire circles I move in--and I wouldn't change a hair on my Black Irish husband's head (Black Irish, by the way, tends to refer to temperment and dark coloring, with that blue-white skin the Irish are famous for, rather than actual black hair. The Darling Husband is brown-and-blue, and has been approached in bars by the local Irish college population, who SWEAR they know what county he comes from.) Their art, their history, their stories and their songs all ring at strange primal levels with me, and I occassionally feel the stirring of the (four drops) of Irish ancestry in me, and will weep at harp music. Their communities, and their stubborn refusal to be assimilated, attract me. Their insistance upon leaving a legacy. But in the end, I return back to the ideals of those distant, tall, half-wild uncivilized men and women, the mothers and fathers of the farmers and the porcelain workers...who thought nothing of sailing into the unknown to see what was there--who scratched and swore and drank and lived and died that "Lo, my father and mother and all of my ancesters should see me die with honor"....hell yeah. That's the side of the fence I want to be on. That's the place where I want to stand. We don't actually know all that much about the Vikings, and I have the feeling that in the end run, the World may not know all that much about me. To the 20 year old Kethrai, this would be very disappointing--after all, she was going to be a rock star poet, famous and important. But to the 32-year-old Kethrai, she is content that it be so. If there is not much left--well, it means I was too busy living to worry about what happened after I was dead. If in a thousand years, someone digs up a shiny thing and thinks "Hm, this is in the style of that unknown New Englandish jewelry maker...." well, I've done right by those ancestors, pack of drunken rampageous clowns that they undoubtedly were. What it comes down to, I suppose, is not worrying about how I'm thought of, but wondering within myself who I am, and worrying about what I can do. Not thinking about the things I will leave behind, but intead, where I can go and what I can make right now. Choosing today. Doing what I can now. You do what you gotta, you help where you can. Stand up straight. The losers write the songs. Did I mention I'm not musical? 7:20 p.m. - 2002-05-19 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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