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.
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