I wish I had a dragon

Image by Josch13, Pixabay 

No, this is not Game of Thrones ode although Dany’s wrathful flyby of Kings Landing inspired the title and thoughts.  I have just returned from a sad transatlantic trip to Scotland for a family funeral.  It was not unexpected but somehow it is always a shock in the literal sense.  On the return trip, suffering a terrible flight with a revered south-east Asian airline, I drowned my sorrows with some unpalatable wine and wrote words on my magazine cover that conveyed how I had felt during the trip.

WRATH, GRIEF, SADNESS, REGRET, RELIEF, LONGING, THANKFULNESS, GRATITUDE, LONELINESS, RESENTMENT, AMUSEMENT, LOVE, CONNECTION, ALIENATION, BOREDOM, AFFECTION, ADMIRATION, JOY, FAMILIARITY, DISCONNECTION, HUMILITY, REFLECTION, EVOLUTION, ACCEPTANCE, IRRITATION

LOVE, LOVE AND MORE LOVE

I see my psychiatrist tomorrow and I think I will just hand him this list of words.  What will he make of it?  Such contradictions, so many emotions and counseling needed.  Funerals are such complex occasions.  Sometimes they are a celebration of a life lived well; sometimes the family gathering causes angst or the opposite.  This is not the time for me to write a memorial – my feelings are too raw.  For every kind comment there is an insensitive remark.  It has been years since my last visit to the old country and so much has changed.  I can no longer mention my country of birth, USA, with pride.  Do friends and strangers really think that the course of modern politics has been in any way influenced by me?  This is the plaque outside Glasgow’s City Halls were I graduated.  My economics lecturer was the local Communist political candidate.

The political climate is no better in the UK or Europe.  BREXIT; right wing Hungarian rule; Scottish Independence; modern day slavery in Italian fields that gives us our cheap tomatoes – to name a few. I see racism and bigotry on both sides of the pond.  As I left Glasgow airport and was waiting in the check-in line, I noticed a young woman sobbing from one end of departures to the other.  It wasn’t busy so I couldn’t figure out why someone wasn’t helping her.  Eventually she ended up close to me and I asked her what was wrong.  She was sick, had taken Nyquil the night before consequently sleeping late.  She arrived 45 minutes before her Canadian charter flight departure but no-one would help her.  I urged her to go back to the closest desks and ask someone to radio the charter representative.

Eventually I checked in and went to find her.  We were sent from pillar to post and I eventually demanded that we see a manager.  The flight had gone but at least the airline representative might be able to find the cheapest alternative to get her home.  She couldn’t call them on her Canadian phone.  I left her in chastened hands with the manager in route and the airline had been radioed.  Who knew all my Texan airport experience would have come in handy?

At my connecting airport in England, I tripped and scraped my knees despite being sober…then.  The only person who ran to my aid was one of the much maligned Eastern Europeans.  A Bulgarian cleaner who spoke very little English also helped.  On the glamorous flight back to Texas with flight attendants that resembled pretty butterflies, I had to complain about vomit blocking a sink and more dried vomit on the floor of a different toilet.  The response was a poor excuse and certainly not an abject apology which I expected.  It concerned me that they wore no aprons to serve food and inefficiently cleaned toilets throughout a 9 hour flight…and then the toilet tissue ran out.  Can you imagine my upcoming complaint form?

My words are my dragon and I wish I could burn my way through the hateful climate with live in.  I wish I could erase my memories of a sad abusive childhood.  I wish I could forgive.  I wish my self-loathing would cease.  I wish I felt more joy or even contentedness.  I wish I had a dragon.

 

Racists come in every color…

Me with my mum and dad.  Is my Dad dark enough for you?

I recently wrote a tongue in cheek post entitled Hueheucoyotl is mischief making. Sometimes I take for granted that many of my followers know all about my ancestry and DNA. New readers must look at my profile picture and envision someone Scandinavian or Irish – both are correct. My name Kerry is a giant clue.

I very rarely receive unpleasant comments (if ever?) – the spam is just that. The comment below, on the above post, incensed me.

Typical white woman think she can just claim our culture. Also just necause you want to interpret things as the work of Huehuecoyotl it does not even remotely mean you have facilitated contact. What a joke, if only my teacher could hear this hahaha. I am Mexican and Navajo descent as well, Coyote is my spirit brotjer/reflection so you’re literally getting it from the horses mouth :p (sic)

Perhaps I should have just deleted it but this is my response –

I will shortly delete both of these comments but how dare you! I have both North American and Central American Native DNA with a long line of Mexican ancestors that I can trace back to the 1700s. My grandfather was born on the Chickasaw Nation reservation in Purcell, OK. Why don’t you go take some lessons on DNA, recessive genetics that produce blue eyed blondes, and more importantly on etiquette? You would make President Trump proud with your racist views. I can choose whichever spirit reflection I want. It’s unlikely I received your opinion from the horse’s mouth but from his ass.

The more I ruminated on it, the more I thought that I would write this post.  It sounded like a young person with a chip on his shoulder.  Try living in a Scottish public housing estate with the name de Ortega.  My only advantage was that I was not discriminated against in the work field as I might have been if I had stayed in California, my birth state.  Most people of Mexican origin are happy to accept me as a half cousin but sometimes I know that I am not quite Mexican enough.  In truth, nobody from Mexico is indigenous because the native tribes both north and south came across the ice passage from Siberia and Asia.

This is my Grandma Juanita and my great aunt. I don’t think there is any doubt about their Mexican heritage. Which one is my grandma?

Mestizo means mixed and can be used as a mongrel insult.  We should all be proud that most of us are mixed.  It should give us less reason to hate each other but even Hitler had some Jewish blood. Not all my family were happy about a Catholic marrying a Protestant, both of whom no longer believed in our faiths. I have embraced my Catholic upbringing with a sense of nostalgia and happily pray in churches all over the world. None of that means that I believe in institutionalized religion but I enjoy elements from most beliefs and faiths.

There was no vision about Huehuecoyotl being my spirit guide, just a happy quirkiness in embracing one of my many roots, with no offence intended. I like Freya, leprechauns and a wide variety of saints. My unwelcome commentator has not responded to my rather snarky reply. After a few days of working with an impossible millennial, I feel a little sympathy but not much.

Is this Mexican enough?

Or is this white enough?