Tuesday, September 16, 2014

The Critical Mom votes YES for Scottish Independence

My name, which I'm not going to publish here, is so ethnically identifiable as to have been an occasional problem, once upon a time when I was employed by a Catholic college.  One of the priests kept trying to find out if I'd been related to a certain Catholic theologian who just happened to have a Presbyterian name. I'd be voting day after tomorrow, had my ancestors not left the tors and crags of their native Scotland for a dubious future as mercenary soldiers to one of the Williams of Orange, who allegedly stiffed them with non-arable lands in Pennsylvania (but here the story grows murky, for the land may well have been evolving into Philadelphia Main Line, while the wanderlust of my ancestors pulled them toward the Carolinas).  Still, few walk that far just for the beauties of the landscape and the sense of adventure. 
And if I were still a Scot, I'd vote yes.  David Cameron's speeches have the ring of a desperate patriarch hanging on to the shreds of a relationship outgrown by his children--who are no longer children.  There are sons out there who still live with their mothers; Norman Bates comes to mind.  The nail in the coffin for me was Cameron's rant:  "There'll be no going back!" as if he were speaking to a naughty two-year-old.  And as every mother knows, if you want the kid to follow you instead of stomp around and say, "I won't go!" you smile, turn away from him, and walk slowly away (he doesn't need to know that you've got the tiny mirror from your lipstick case trained on him for the bad guys who couldn't possibly appear in the nanosecond it takes for him to realize that yes, he does still need you.)  But it remains his decision to follow, and that becomes a part of his independence later on.  
Then there are parents who really don't want for their adult children to move out.  Excuses are made, apron strings tightened.  And England, the sun set on your empire long ago, and it is time for Scotland to build its own future.  As a canny old fisherman remarked, "It won't be the land of milk and honey.  But it'll be better."  I agree.

4 comments:

  1. Phd Hahn is the first thing google pops up when you ask about theologians with the specifics you mention. There just are not that may people with those particulars. That is sort of my point actually, that sort of information drastically narrows the number of people that might be you. Of course that may or may not actually bother you very much.

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  2. I Googled it too, right after asking you. Thanks. Think my cover is still safe but it is nice to know about Hahn the theologian and thanks for reading the blog and for commenting.

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