I know it isn't quite yet Tuesday...but sometimes, you need to know what your expectations are.

My mother has recently discovered that she loves lemon drops. Not the candy. The alcoholic beverage that has two shots of Limoncello, two shots of vodka, and two shots of Cointreau, not to mention the added fructose of the lemon juice. Her liver is going to be busy all through tonight and tomorrow. I am glad for the fact that she chooses not to get drunk very often.

The thing about my mother when she's heavily intoxicated is that she becomes very talkative. She is a very taciturn woman otherwise, though whatever comes out of her mouth anyways is usually rather sarcastic or stern, as a mother's words should be. Point is, when she's inebriated, she's verbose.

So, tonight, when she'd had two of these cocktails, she caught me slip into a Scottish accent. My grandfather only recently divulged the information that he is a descendant of Robert the Bruce, a national hero in Scotland and the first king of an independent Scotland, independence he fought for. This makes me a descendant, a member of the clan of Bruce, and I am, in blood, a Scottish royal. My mother and I have taken it upon ourselves to learn more about my Scottish heritage. So, naturally, she thought it funny to fall into a silly accent that, truth be told, wasn't all that bad.

That's when the situation and the conversation became more serious. My mother looked at me through the alcoholic haze, stared me down, and said "Elizabeth, look at me." Not really taking her seriously, I looked up briefly to see what she wanted. When she wasn't quick enough with her speech, I took it as her desire to further antagonize me and went back to playing with the cat.

"Elizabeth!" I heard from the couch, and I knew I had better pay attention, despite my amusement with the cat.

Still using that silly ass Scottish accent, she began to lecture me on my heritage. For the first part, it didn't really make much sense to me: it was mostly just her blathering on in that goofy voice, until she barked at me again.

"Elizabeth! Stop looking away!" At this point, my rebellious nature reared its head. The line I'd always used when I was three came erupting out of my mouth.

"My name is Ellie!" I felt pretty confident with my retort. Of course, my mother has a notorious history of never taking shit lying down. She is, after all, the source of my more intellectual tendencies, and she knows better than to let me have my way.

"No! Your name is Elizabeth! Do you know what that means?" Of course I knew. It meant 'consecrated to God'. I also knew why I was named so, and I assumed that was what she was asking me. Three of my great-grandmothers were named Elizabeth, including Marjorie Elizabeth. That was the answer I gave her. "No!" she scolded. "It means that you have a heavy burden on your shoulders." She took the next twenty minutes reminding me on all the historical Elizabeths, Biblical or otherwise. All of them had an important place in history. Aaron, brother to Moses the Prophet, had a wife named Elisheba, the Hebrew for Elizabeth. Two reigning queens of England were Elizabeth. Mary's cousin, mother to John the Baptist, was Elizabeth. Queen Isabel, wife of Fernando of Aragon, was also Elizabeth in the Spanish. Even in America, one of the leaders of the feminist movement was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was also an abolitionist, and the reason women can vote today. Of all the female names in history, my mother told me, there was no name as prominent as Elizabeth.

"Now," she told me as she reminded me once more to look at her  -- granted, it's hard to keep eye contact with someone as drunk as she was, and with as much going on in the room as there was, "you are gifted with a great intellectual capacity that your sisters do not share. At the same time, you will NOT take this to your head; you will not be vain about it either. But there are many with your name, with your heritage that will not live up to them. You are not likely to live up to them either. But it is your obligation to strive for it anyway." This was what sobered me at the end of the night. What she said next was what gave me a renewed sense of pride.

"On my side of the family, you are descended from a long line of French stewards. It was our family who attended the cathedral where the Dauphin was crowned, and it was our family who was obligated to be caretakers for the French throne. On your father's side, you are Scottish royalty. You have a great heritage, a great number of expectations. As the oldest, it is your job to ensure that you make something of that lineage. My parents didn't care about that stuff. All they cared about was making a buck. As for your dad's parents..." she waved her hand dismissively, "they're too busy making gin and tonics. But it is your job to remember who you are and what your expectations are, who you are obligated to be."

So now, as I sit here, typing my story, I ask the same of you. Where my mother never knew about her ancestry, where her parents never cared to make her understand the importance, she strives to help me understand, and I'd like you to do the same. Know who you are. Know what standards you set for yourself are the standards you set for your children and their children. As my mother said before I shooed her off to bed, "the past makes you who you are today, in order for you to pave a better future." So here I am. I begin the preparations to become someone more today.

My Struggle with My Zodiac Sign

I am the oldest of four girls, and the oldest of my generation in  my family - that's thirteen cousins, if it really matters to you that much. Yet, for as long as I can remember, my friends have always treated me as the baby. I have always been the most naive seeming out of my peers. Not that I truly believe in it, but it doesn't help that I am a Virgo, and for those of you more familiar with the Greek Zodiac, Virgo is the Virgin. See what I mean? Even the stars have to point out my sheltered upbringing. They have to make it a part of my identity. Of course, Virgo is a dual sign, a fact few people know, but the Vixen is a side of Virgo that only a select few ever get to see. So far, all everyone sees is the Virgin.

I'm not the naïve young woman I once was. But, like the ghosts that haunt the catacombs of Paris, my innocence lives with me. It's all anyone really sees of me. It's always so funny to watch the faces of my friends when I curse or when I make a lewd joke. They never expect it because of how proper or prim I appear to be, which has served me better than I might let on. At the same time, my peers seem to be forever deterred by the rose-tinted glasses they think I sport.

So, when I visited my mother's friend, I was playing with her Bombay, Finn. There was a discussion about how he had come with the name, Rex, and she didn't like the name, so she changed it. I told her that, had it been me, he would have been Bagheera for Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. This is what came of that discussion and my continuing frustration with my zodiac sign.

Finn or Rex or Bagheera (Angel Face)
Dark as ebony is your coat - it is the coal from the very bowels of the Earth,
A fossil from the Carboniferous, and it douses your fur.
Yet all anyone can see is your eyes.

They are sickly sweet orbs, green like growth and goodness, wondering,
You are bewildered, full of desire to understand.
They betray the child in you.

Your fur, how it covers you in sinful shadows, dark like sobriety and pain,
angry, growling, stewing, consuming all light to fester.
It is a splotch of something sinister and forbidden in the daylight.
Yet, all they can see is your eyes.

Soft with love, a light in the blanket of night, your eyes,
They whisper duets of innocence, genuine caring.
They are your virgin traitors - they reveal your naïveté.

Every part of you screams of your haunted past,
Yet no one can get past your angel face.

Introduction

My name is Elizabeth Sawyer, and I am an amateur poet.

This blog is not about getting me published (although I won't object if someone would like to put my words in print). This blog is not about me whining about the follies of my life. This is about one human being trying to make sense of her own emotions, and in the process, if you are out there, I hope it helps you make sense of yours. People are vulnerable and scared, and we build walls to protect ourselves, and sometimes we are so closed off from ourselves that we forget how to understand what we're feeling. This is where I put my foot down.

My name is Ellie, and this is my attempt to understand my feelings.

Vying for Freedom
A girl with golden tresses looks out of the window of her tower
--a place her adopted mother stuck her long ago
with the adhesive effect of pine sap--
and she thinks about how through all the years she's spent,
exploring and hiding and learning,
that she's discovered, memorized, grown complacent to
all the nooks and corners and spots hidden away in her little world,
her little prison.

One day, she asks her mother,
when will I get to see more of the out-of-doors?
The old woman laughs, a cynical chuckle meant for more sinister intent,
and pats the girl's head of sunshine and buttercups to say,
when you are ready.

A robin's hatchling never learns to fly until he gains a certain curiosity
--what's beyond the ledge of my downy nest?
He'll never know unless he's very brave, unless he's very daring.
(Bold is a color best worn with your chin held high.)

So while his father is out, snooping in the tall wheat and grasses
for worms, juicy and succulent, the fuel for the flight to be had someday,
he leaps, and despite a wholehearted thrust towards the sky, he tumbles.
Aerial acrobatics must wait for another day.
Nevertheless, his father, all pomp and red-breasted pride, says,
There's always another day; try again tomorrow, dear heart.
The hatchling's bruised ego is cooled and tempered, and
he is readied for a new day.

I'm in the parking lot when I hear the tortured scream
of a beater truck that seen too many halting stoplights.
My hair has fallen out of its restraints, and the wind catches it,
Zephyr playing with the copper brown strands in his fingers,
tugging me back east, teasing me with thoughts of a home back
somewhere on the other side of the mountains, underneath a Big Sky.
Someday.
I'll return someday.