Inaugural Story

I've wanted to create this blog for a very long time and I've struggled with how to begin. I am not a professional writer, nor do I claim to be. I was last published with a byline in 2005 in T.H.E. Journal and have written little of substance since then. My sincere hope is that someone may read this blog and have a laugh or a giggle or maybe identify with some of the stories contained within. These stories are a big part of what makes me who I am today and I feel fortunate to have most of these stories to tell.


Following is my first story, please be kind.


Wanting to be Something Special


The part of Maine where I grew up is inhabited largely by people with indeterminate ethnicity beyond Western European. Most families have been in the area since it was part of Massachusetts. Modern immigration patterns left our part of the state untouched, there was and is still today, very little industry that would attract immigration on large scale. As a result, most people don't have that connection to a unique heritage, my family included. Sure, there were the people from northern Europe, those blonde haired blue eyed people with umlauts and double vowels  in their names, but those were their only distinguishing characteristics. Those and their meetings at the Finnish American Society.


I craved some sort of uniqueness and individuality, and I wanted that to come through ethnicity. I thought having a strong ethnic background would make me more special then my generic European classmates. 


My mom was "from away." Meaning she was not born and raised in the county that I was born and raised. This was the source of constant teasing from my father and his family, despite that fact that my mother's mother grew up three houses from my father's childhood home. My mother also possessed one other unique characteristic, she was half Polish and first generation American. 


I clung to this, I reasoned that I could fudge the truth, that I could say I was half-Polish. It was only a half-lie. I was a quarter Polish. I ignored the facts that my remaining three quarters were rooted in three hundred years of New England obscurity. I also ignored the reputation of the Poles and that we were blonde haired, blue eyed Catholic Poles, we could have passed for Germans back in the day. My great grandparents also left Europe during WWI, after my uncle had been born and shortly before my grandfather entered this world.


I immersed myself in reading about the Holocaust and I aligned myself with the plight of the Poles and the Jews. Little did I know back then that I could identify with another persecuted group in that time. I proudly announced to anyone who would listen (outside of the earshot of my parents) that I was Polish, and I relished in any questions they asked me. I cursed my grandfather for not being proud of being Polish and never teaching my mother the language or anything about her heritage. I felt it unfair that when we visited him in Connecticut that he would sneak off to the Polish American club and never brought me. 


As I grew older, I adopted a second ethnicity after my father's grandmother returned from a trip to Scotland with her family crest in hand. I now knew that she was a Scot and that I could now claim that I was half Polish and half Scottish, and that made me very unique and very special. I did a report at school on my family history and focused on this new-found Scottish history, ignoring all other family lines. 


It wasn't until after attending college in the big city that I started to care less about having a strong ethnic background and accepted that my multi-ethnic makeup is what truly makes me special. While it seems everyone in Boston is Italian or Irish or a mix of the two, I am special, my families have been in New England for hundreds of years, we were a part of the creation of this land. I am proud of being from Maine and of Maine. I can milk a cow and a goat, I have "gone hayin'," I swim in lakes, I love to hike, and I can decipher heavy Maine, Maritime, and Acadian dialects. These are the things that make me who I am, and for that I am eternally grateful.