Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Who Are I Really?


I just looked at my last two posts and it seems that I'm a wee bit obsessed with this "Who am I," stuff lately. First I went and bought my own domain so my blog is coming from www.therealrexray.com and I needed to let people know just who I am and where I'm coming from and there's a whole story behind the Real Rex Ray label that has to do with a San Francisco artist who uses the same name. Then Babs and I went to Florida looking at communities in which to buy a warm weather home. Man did that result in some soul searching. Gotta know who you are so you can know where you'll fit in and where you won't. You'd think that with all that soul searching and elucidating and crap I'd be quite done with all this "Who am I," and "This is who I am" stuff. Unfortunately, not so. Bear with me. Just one more, and I'll leave this alone.

The problem with asking the question, "Who am I," when you're 59 years old is that there has been a lot of life lived, a lot of water under the bridge and who you are is kind of an amalgamation of 59 years of experience carefully blended with the inherited DNA that made you who you are at birth. Sifting and sorting through all that data and keeping some and discarding some is a seriously daunting process. So where do you start?

For the record, I bought a kit and swabbed my cheek and joined the National Geographic Human Genome Project. I waited for a couple of months and what came back was basically not a huge shock. Like all human beings, my DNA can be traced back to its African origins, but the more recent data, tracing the migrations out of Africa led straight to the British Isles. That is to say that my ancestry is, for the most part, Celtic in origin. Ray is a good Scottish name. Surprise, surprise. Buncha doggone Scottish fundamentalist Protestants who immigrated to America by way of Ireland. That makes me Scotch-Irish.

In America this group settled in the mountains of Pennsylvania, headed south to the Carolinas and Georgia. When it got too crowded there they went westward into the hills of Tennessee and all over Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma. Scotch-Irish, also known as rednecks, hillbillies, and the inventors of country and bluegrass music. This is part of who I am. Try as I might, I cannot deny it. My father drove a bread truck.

Then there was my mother's side of the family. Family name was Vandevier. Buncha fundamentalist Protestants from the Netherlands who immigrated to Pennsylvania, went south to Georgia, west to Arkansas, etc., etc., etc. (See above history of Scotch-Irish Rays. Same crap.) Intermarried with Scotch-Irish fundamentalist sorts and pretty soon the two were indistinguishable, and if you throw in one or two Native American Baptists of the Choctaw variety you have a pretty good idea of where my ancestry comes from. It means Southern. Learn to say "Y'all." (Question: What is the plural of y'all? Answer: "All o' y'all.")

At any rate Grandpa Ray was a pain in the ass and died from a heart attack when he was in his 60's. Had a small farm and an outhouse and cows and chickens in the yard. Scared the shit out of me when I was 4 or 5. Cows are big and chickens, well they're dumb and ugly and birds. I lived in Little Rock and we had phones, indoor plumbing, and television. He chewed tobacco and had a spit can at all times. Of course Grandma Vandevier dipped snuff and had a spit can too. Come to think of it, she was pain in the ass as well. Grandpa Vandevier was beloved by most, but decidedly a tyrant when it came to religion and traditional roles and values. He served as a substitute preacher when the full-time guy was off doing a revival or something. Wouldn't let my mother go to college because women were supposed to get married, have kids, and do those wifely woman things. Mom was decidedly frustrated. Wanted to be a teacher, so she said. Ended up raising her own kids, working at a burger joint, and doing day care for other people's kids on the side.

Somewhere along the line, my family ended up in a suburb, on the same block with teachers, retired Air Force officers, doctors, and insurance agents. My older sister got us all involved with this church that pretty much demanded that you go to church for Sunday school, Sunday morning sermons, Sunday evening sermons, and Wednesday night Bible study classes. Then, if they could get you to do so, you ended up with other church people doing something church related a couple of other times during the week, and your whole life revolved around church. Need a job. Some guy at church can help you out.

Trouble is, all of that church and fundamentalism and crap didn't really take with me. When I was a little kid, the fear of going to hell scared the shit out of me. As I grew into my teens and I started to think seriously about it, the religion stuff just kind of got less and less realistic. Then I stopped going to church altogether. I started searching for something and worked my way through most major religions and philosophies. Somehow, in my college years, serious atheism took root and still hasn't gone away. Science is, well, science. Religion is, well, faith, that is stuff based on believing in something that isn't rational and can't be proven. Oops! Several centuries of fundamentalist beliefs in my family and I did away with them in a few short years. Went and got rational. And I went and dismissed racism and country music in the bargain. Racism is just ugly, and well country music is just too country. Don't drive a truck and I do like cities. Country is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. Jazz? Well that came later. We'll get there eventually.

I know I promised early on in this post that I'd end this "Who am I stuff," after this post. That now seems a bit premature. I'm on a voyage of self-discovery and I've barely scratched the surface. Haven't even gotten to college and the hippy era yet, much less leaving the South and mixing with Yankees and perverts and such. Who are I really, will go on at least one more episode, so stay tuned boys and girls. We're gonna figure out just who the heck I am sooner or later, or at least get a little closer. What I do know is that for a serious atheist, I sure can quote some scripture. If I could live with myself, I could easily be a bigtime preacher, but I couldn't, and that's part of who I am. See all o' y'all later.







5 comments:

  1. Hahahaha - yes, I hear "all o y'all" all the time down here. Not it my house, though. I grew up saying y'all, as did my husband, also a Southerner, but when the kids came along, we banished the word and haven't spoken it since. We did not want the kids to grow up speaking that way and thus experience the ridicule often associated with a southern accent, and use of such language.
    Of course they hear it everyday by friends and neighbors, but constant reminders over the years that we don't say that have worked. They never say it.
    Another big thing with my husband is the word 'yeah' instead of 'yes'. Forbidden in this house, and when I slip and say 'yeah', the kids correct me in a hurry.

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  2. Lori, Lori, Lori. Where to start? Southernness is at the core of my being despite living in the Upper Midwest most of my adult life. More about that in another post. Let it suffice to say that I lost my y'all, never to be found again, and I honestly never mourned it. More about that as well. There is an ongoing conflict between the Southerner at my core and the intellectual, artsy Northerner that I have become and that conflict is what drives who I am.

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  3. I'm not sure how to take that - usually when someone says "Lori, Lori, Lori" to me it is because I have done or said something stupid and they feel a need to explain. I do get it, and I understand the conflict between the Southerner at the core and the intellectual Northerner. I understand your search for who you are, at least as you write about it, and I appreciate the way you write about it. I think many of us are doing the same thing (searching for answers to who we are) But maybe that's not what you mean.

    I was laughing at your Q and A in the fifth paragraph, and then went on too much about a personal thing (who cares, really). My bad.

    I enjoy your perspective on many things and I enjoy reading your blog.

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  4. I was raised a good catholic girl (I stole the line from someone that I call myself a recovering catholic) - even when I was younger their dogma was on the same par as the stories in my Blue Fairy Book. I wanted to believe but it just never happened for me.

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  5. Lori I'm very sorry if you thought I was chiding you. I wasn't. The repetition of Lori was more a way of saying to you "Oh boy, that set off a whole series of permutations in my own head,and where did that come from?" Frankly, I write a lot of personal stuff here about myself and my life and often find myself wondering, "Who cares really?" From the outset you have been one of my most loyal and regular readers and have offered some wonderful commentary. I appreciate it. There has never been anything for me to take you to task for. My stuff I write about is personal and if you have a personal reaction to it, and choose to share it with me, that's pretty cool. It means I may have reached someone. Carry on soldier. All is well.

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