Dydd Gwyl Dewi hapus

And that, boys and girls, is the sum total of my cut and paste Welsh. Cut and paste as in don't blame me if it's not right.

Happy St David's Day, though.

I have Welsh in my background through one of my great-grandmothers, in case anyone was wondering why I bring this up. That, and the fact that those silly Irish get all the press (in a couple of weeks... can you believe that St Patrick's Day is just around the corner already?) because they're good at being louder about the whole thing.

And before anyone takes umbrage, I have (or had. She's long gone by now) an Irish great-grandmother (or great-great-, I think it was) too.

The rest of me is English. Oh, and Ukrainian and French are in there somewhere as well.

Typical Canadian mutt, yes.

It's funny, lineage. Some of us spend so much time being proud (or alternately, ashamed) of where our forefathers (foreparents? I suppose forefathers isn't politically correct enough these days) just happened to be born, like it really has anything to do with... well, anything. My ancestors came from where they came from. They ended up here, where I come from. Should it really make any kind of difference to me?

It does.

It does, but not for reasons of patriotism or false pride (how can I be proud of a country I've never even visited?) or anything like that.

It's identity.

In a weird sort of way, it helps me fit in the world.

You see, I have two very different sides to my family. On the one side I can go back numerous generations. In one case, the family's even been traced to a Domesday Book listing. I could go to England tomorrow and find exact ancestral homes (and favourite pubs) if I wanted to.

On the other side, I have nothing.

It's like there's this enormous blank space. I know the basics of a grandmother and grandfather, and after that it's just empty.

That feels weird.

Almost like that side of what created me doesn't really exist.






Maybe it doesn't. Maybe I really am an alien, Smudgers.

And for the rest of you: never mind. You sort of had to be there.

Now, the odd thing about all of this is that the blanks in my family history on one side have made me that much more interested in what I do know about my family in general (including where they came from), and yet my grandmother on the well-documented side refused to think of herself as anything but Canadian. Not an English-Canadian. Not a Welsh-Canadian. Not a hyphenate of any sort. She was stubborn about it to the point that she wouldn't fill out the line on the census forms where it asked for your family background. She was born in Canada, she was Canadian, it was good enough for her, and it should darn well be good enough for the government.

So how do I think of myself? I'm not wearing a leek today, if that's a hint. No daffodil either, but that could be because they're not in season here.

AND BY THE WAY, WE HAVE ENOUGH SNOW NOW. Dammit.

Erm, yeah. Distracted myself there for a moment.

How do I think of myself?




Typical Canadian mutt, just like I said above.

And overall, it's not such a bad thing to be. Even if it doesn't really have anything to do with anything except the luck of the draw.