THOUGHTS to the PAST

     I once told a friend that I am fearless.  Her father was dying, and our conversation naturally turned to that of death and what lay beyond.  I told her I was fearless because the spirits of my ancestor's are watching over me.  They will protect and guide me.  Because we are family and clan members, they will be there to help me through anything.  The spirits of the past, of people who lived in a different country, in a different time, people who I've never once seen, people who never looked upon me, never knew me, when they were alive.  I know they are watching over me.  

     I could almost see and feel them.  From somewhere bagpipes are playing.  They are behind me in military formations with swords and spears at the ready.  They move around me, encircling me, making a protective barrier.  There they stay waiting for my signal, waiting for someone to challenge them.  It's a wonderful thought, and I can't say that I don't still believe it in some way.  Even though, I know next to nothing about these people.  My Scottish heritage and the clan Mackay seem to be lost in the past.  There is very little to this side of my family left.  There are no traditions and no one who can tell me anything.

  

     My father, an uncle I've seen only a couple of times in my life, whose name I've long since forgotten, and some relative in Scotland whom I've never met and heard very little about, are the only ones who are still around.  The only thing I've heard concerning my relative in Scotland is that he has red hair and is very fat.  My father wont talk about his brother, and claims to know nothing about his family or ancestral history.  When pushed my father will recount the story of our family the same way.  “I don't know” he'll say”but the only stories I ever heard is that everyone in our family were horse thieves, and either hanged or kicked out of every decent country in the world until we ended up here.” I don't know if any of this is true or not, but I don't believe it. 

     When I was a kid I would have these really great Robin Hood fantasies about my family.  You know they would spend there time stealing from the rich and helping damsels in distress and things like that.  There would be knights and sword fights with my family taking up arms to defend the oppressed.  Again, probably not true, but it makes for a great time when your a kid.  When I was older and learned more about the country and its heroes the fantasies couldn't help but stay in the back of my mind.  Today movies like Braveheart keep them alive, but still there is no mention of the clan Mackay or any other who could be a relative of mine.  The same is true about all the history books I've ever read about Scotland, the clan Mackay is not even mentioned.

     What literature I have been able to get on the clan Mackay, through events like the Highland Games and the like, does not say much.  Only that the clan history was full of warriors and wars.  Great warriors so they say though they were never able to win any war.  One war in particular, with Sutherland, lasted a hundred years finally ending when the Mackays were forced to surrender.  Anyway, the clan was a poor one, living on land that could not sustain them.  The clan chief broke up the clan centuries before I was ever born.  He took most of the young men in the clan to go and fight as mercenaries in Sweden or somewhere.

     Closer to our time, I learned that my grandfather, a drunk, came to America in the early 1900's.  He came over as a cattle buyer for the British government.  He liked the country and decided to stay.  It was here in America that he met my grandmother, ironically she had come over from Scotland as well.  She came to this country by herself at age sixteen as an indentured servant.  She had also managed to stay in school until she graduated from high school, an unheard of thing for a woman back then.  Unfortunately, that's all the story I know.  My grandmother died early on in my father's life, and my grandfather died early on in mines.

     Even though I never met any of them its amazing that I can still feel a connection to them.  I do wonder about them.  I wonder if they are proud of me, even if I'm not a thief or haven't managed to get myself kicked out of the country yet.  Seriously, I mostly wonder how they feel about being forgotten by their family.  Although I haven't forgotten about them myself, I don't think I ever knew enough about them to forget them.