Blood Connections

September 17, 2018September 17, 2018 / Lisa / 10 Comments

I’ve been thinking about family lately. Both kinds. The ones forcibly tied to you by the accident of shared blood and DNA, and the ones you choose.

I have three sisters. One shares my DNA and two don’t. But all three are my greatly loved sisters. I also have a couple sisters-in-law that I’m kind of partial to (don’t let it go to your heads, girls). They are family, with no thought on my part as to whether DNA figures into it or not.

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Las Vegas Sisters

I have uncles, aunts, and cousins that I’ve never met and wouldn’t recognize if they passed me on the street. I have some friends who are deeply ingrained in my heart that I can’t imagine life without.

And just recently I’ve found that there’s even more family out there I’ve never met. Adoption brings a whole new equation to that phrase ‘aunts, uncles, and cousins’. My mother was adopted at birth and I’ve just recently found some history on her biological mother, and some first cousins.

Mom with adopted great aunt and uncle. Oddly, mom and the great-aunt look alike.

Do those new relatives matter?

Not much in the grand scheme of things, personally. I’d like to find out medical history. You know, when your doctor says ‘does your family have a history of…’ and you have to sit there with a blank look on your face. It would be nice to be able to answer instead. But overall, the people who would have been dramatically impacted by this discovery are of past generations. My mother, who longed to find blood family all her life, died before so much of this was available online.

It obviously meant a lot to her. That connection of shared blood. I know it means a lot to some of my family.

But me? Shared blood is just shared chemicals. That DNA bit doesn’t mean someone is entitled to love, as everyone knows. It doesn’t mean I have an obligation to someone simply because we’re ‘family’. It doesn’t mean there’s any connection.

And yet…

I was in Scotland and Denmark in July. I’ve been to Scotland before and love the area of Caithness. In particular, the towns of Dunnet and Thurso where I have friends. It was so, so wonderful to be back there. Not just seeing my good friends, but being there. The northern and western coasts just simply fill my heart. I took more photos there than anywhere else on the trip. No, I’m not going to slide off into a tangent on inherited memories and ancestors and unexplainable connections to land. That’s not me.

Dunnet Head

And yet…

I found all the information on my mother’s biological mother and those assorted new relatives because I did a DNA test. I put a great deal of thought and discussion into the pros and cons, and ultimately decided I wanted that medical history.

One of the things that came back was an almost 80% match to Scotland. No surprises there. All you have to do is look at my hair and freckles to know there’s either Scotland or Ireland in there somewhere. But this test was more specific than that. Not just Scotland, but the western coast of Scotland. Exactly where I was a couple months ago, madly taking almost five hundred pictures. Little did I know.

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There were no DNA results that tied any miniscule part of me to Denmark.

I took less than ten photos in Denmark.

Of course that could all be because I live in the mountains. High country will always be my spiritual home. Rain and fog and low clouds. Trees and, yes, okay, heather is kind of nice. I love the mystery of the mountains when their craggy tops are hidden and you can imagine anything you want walking up there, free of crowds and traffic.

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But who knows. Maybe there’s something to that DNA thing after all. Not enough for me to change how I value and choose my family.

But maybe enough to change how I look at a landscape.

Or how I move through the stories tied to the land.

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Curmudgeons and Sheep

July 28, 2018July 28, 2018 / Lisa / 6 Comments

While traveling recently in Scotland, we were invited to a sheep farm to watch how sheepdogs work. I’ve seen sheepdog trials many times and have also watched a friend’s dogs work. I’m always amazed at the intelligence of the dogs and the bond they have with their shepherd.

This visit sounded interesting though. Our guide told us to not get upset by the shepherd, a man named Neil. He has won many titles and awards, and his dogs have won even more. People come to him to have their dogs trained, or to purchase dogs from him. But we were told to not get upset if he came across as abrupt or curt. He showed people how dogs work sheep on a regular basis but it was clear that humoring the public was not part of his agreement. He didn’t like people much, we were told. He preferred dogs over humans.

Hmmm…sounds like someone I live with. My kind of non-people people. I liked him before we even got there.

When we arrived he was out in a pasture, holding a young dog, with several around him poised for action, knowing what was coming. The sheep were also poised in a flock, knowing what was coming. Our arrival was slowed slightly by my not paying attention (too busy watching the dogs and thinking of my favorite border collie, Jax) and tumbling to the ground in a grand entrance. But once we were gathered, Neil sent out the dogs.

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He explained each whistled command as the dogs worked, herding sheep out into the pasture, bringing them around, and singling one to return to Neil. The young dog he’d been holding was let loose to work. The pup was rough around the edges but very game.

I sidled closer to Neil.

I asked politely if I could ask him a question.

His eyebrows shot up.

I asked him how he knew a pup would be a good working dog.

It was like he was suddenly illuminated in the brightest of lights. He told me all about blood lines and parentage.

I then asked if there was a dog that had been the best to work with. And we were off on a long, wonderful story about a ‘soft’ dog. He sang the praises of this dog, who had lived to be quite elderly. Soft with lambs and puppies and children but spot-on dedicated and focused when working.

See the focus of the dog by the wagon? She’s poised with a low horizon to not scare sheep, waiting for the whistle.

Others sidled closer.

I then asked about the worst, or hardest dog. Again the stories poured forth of a young dog brought to him for training, whose confidence was destroyed before he arrived. The poor dog tried and failed repeatedly, with extreme lack of self-confidence. Neil said he refused to continue training because he couldn’t stand seeing the dog’s heart broken every time he came in from the pasture after failing yet again. The dog became a family pet instead.

Two young ones more interested in playing with wool than playing with sheep.

After the stories, Neil abruptly left. Our guide said she was shocked at how talkative he’d been, and suggested we head back. But here he came around the corner of an outbuilding. And lined up in his arms was a row of tiny, ten-week-old puppies. Coming right up to me, he handed me squeaking and grunting fat puppies, talking about their blood lines and telling stories about their parents.

When we left, I thought about the contrast between what we had been warned to expect and what we’d found. And it was obvious what made the difference. Who wouldn’t light up when someone asked questions about the things they are passionate about, and love deeply? I didn’t do anything extraordinary. I think others would have asked similar questions if they hadn’t been intimidated by the guide’s warnings.

Me? I simply wanted to hear the stories.

And what wonderful stories they were.

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It Was an Accident!

July 14, 2018 / Lisa / 3 Comments

A friend recently fell off a ladder while attempting to trim a tree with a chainsaw on a pole. She ended up with a hairline fracture of her leg. She hobbled around a bit and then tried to make the fracture a full-on break by slipping in cat vomit.

While she had my sympathy initially, when it got to the cat vomit part all she got was laughter.

Another friend trying not to faint after trying to break her hand

Then I thought about all the stupid things we do as our instinct screams ‘you idiot!’. When you know better, but go forth anyway in the hopes of conquering in spite of your common sense.

Like the time my husband climbed a ladder to rescue his kitten while wearing only a bathrobe and a slippery pair of wet Crocs. Both survived.

Or the time my mother dislocated her shoulder chasing a rooster. She fell over the cage. The rooster escaped.

During my years on a fire department I saw many, many accidents. After a while you realize that pretty much everything in life is just one big accident after another. Think about it. Car accidents. House fires caused by faulty wiring or a tea kettle left simmering too long. Mistakes at work. Taking the wrong turn and getting lost.

The girl whose dog knocked her down inside an old growth tree stump where she was stuck, feet sticking out, until we showed up.

What could go wrong? Well, actually, nothing. He’s pretty safe.

I wonder how many times my parents fell for the line, ‘but it was an accident!’.

Followed by ‘I didn’t mean it!’.

Followed by ‘it was her fault!’.

And then followed with, most commonly, spankings.

My first trip to the hospital: learning how to ride a bike without training wheels and thinking the bike would magically stop if I pulled up to a curb. After all, that’s what cars did.

Nothing was ever the fault of these two siblings, not even this hike that scared my husband so bad

There was the time I swallowed a ring and was scared I’d get in trouble so I didn’t say anything. For days I could feel it in there every time I swallowed. Eventually, I assume, it…passed on.

Of course not all accidents result in bad things. I met some wonderful friends because I didn’t understand the distance between two points while wandering in northern Scotland.

Every day tiny decisions are made that take us through life in ways we never foresee. Where would I be right this moment if I’d been running late this morning, or early? Would I then have been in the car accident instead of driving by? Millions of tiny decisions all throughout the day impact us and most of the time we aren’t even aware of them.

If you think about this too much you’ll never get out of bed. So instead I’m going to remind my sister of the time she brilliantly thought she could swing out on a rope tied to a tree growing out of a steep hillside, and land without breaking any bones.