Breaking Irish

Being Irish means three things to most North American people who claim descent from the shores of Érie: being a red-head (or ginger-adjacent), being Catholic, and being on extremely good terms with alcohol. Yet, I am none of these things, and my family is most certainly of Gaelic descent.

Clearly I’m not a red-head - so far from it that a lot of people think that my dark brown hair is actually black. It’s not. It’s dark brown, and I’ve never dyed it, so there. The so-called Black Irish sect of the population is where this comes from, which has it’s own interesting backstory. This difference from the typical Irish hair and skin tone could have come about from a variety of places, but I chalk it up to the fact that Ireland got invaded by pretty much every race in Europe at some point in its early history and obviously population mixing occurred. 

The Steenson clan comes from the Northern part of Ireland (Warren Point & Newry), by way of the Viking invaders - Denmark specifically, hence the surname from the Danish given name “Steen” - and even from the early days we were not Catholics. Apparently we’re Presbyterians going back a bunch of generations, and besides the 3 years I spent attending the Catholic private school we haven’t had anything to do with the Catholic Church. In fact, my maternal Grandfather converted to Anglicanism, and years later when my mother heard that women were being ordained by the Anglican Church she went back to the church as well. So technically, I was raised and baptized as an Anglican, but I’ve never really had much use for any kind of organized religion besides as a social medium. And even that got old when I decided that being told that I had to live by someone else’s rules (rules created and perpetuated by a hetero-normal patriarchal organization) was not for me. 

And then comes the drinking… It’s a well-documented fact that alcohol and I have a tumultuous relationship. (Is that any different than any of my other relationships? Haha…) In the beginning I drank like a fish, walked off my hangovers, and never ever blacked out. Now that’s not so true, since the last time that I had 3 Cosmopolitans in a sitting I blacked out and ended up in the Emergency Room. I still have the occasional drink with dinner, but gone are the days when I spend St. Patrick’s Day running around town drinking green shots and then be functional the next day. Apparently we are getting old. 

So I’m raising a glass of Jameson’s to all the Irish-folk who don’t fit the mold - if you’re lucky enough to be Irish, then you’re lucky enough!

images from Tumblr

I Got it From my Mother (and my Father)

Things I Blame my Mother For

My untame-able frizzy fluffy curls

My artistic nature

My addiction to books

My interest in alternate religions

My chocolate addiction

My height (both the good and the bad)

My inability to ever have a flat stomach

My short waist

My love of puppies

My poor eyesight

My teeth

Things I Blame my Father For

My vocabulary

My eye for composition

My thinning hair

My tech skillz

My knowledge (and love of) cars

My shopping problem

My diet (“see-food” & “light-out”)

My allergies to dust & cats

My eyebrow (which I force to be plural)

My stash of junk food

My need to have only the best

My "always right" attitude

Cultural Vistas

March is always a challenging month to write for this blog. I’m always super busy and the tail end of Winter always leaves me feeling a lack of creative drive, so pulling together a month’s worth of topics is a struggle to say the least. Last year, in fact, I just took the whole month off. Though to be fair, I was finishing up my last year of grad school and trying to slog through that was trial enough.

But this year I have no handy excuse, so I thought to myself “What is going on during March?” Well, there’s the Ides of March, and St. Patrick’s Day, national tartan day, and the Spring Equinox. Two of those are a bit vague to spread into a whole month’s worth of ideas – especially since I highly doubt we’ll see proper Spring in Regina until sometime in May – but between tartans and good old St. Patrick I had my inspiration: we’ll talk about cultural heritage this month! (Thankfully I’m descended equally from four very different European nations, so it works out nicely to the four week plan).

So we’ll kick things off with the Ukraine, since it seems to be on everyone’s radar due to the events in Eastern Europe.

My Ukrainian heritage is probably the one which I draw on the most. It’s where my last name comes from (though arguably it could be considered Russian, since the parts of the Ukraine that my ancestor emigrated from in 1913 are now part of Russia), and I have a lot of memories that are tied up with Ukrainian traditions. Our big family history book – yes it is an actual published book, though in extremely limited edition – is all about the community of Willingdon, Alberta, where a large settlement of Ukrainian immigrants settled – and where my paternal Grandfather was raised.

People always said I got my bossiness from my paternal German Grandmother, but it’s pretty clear that my Grandfather got his way with some things. Holidays for example, were more often that not done in the Ukrainian style. Rather than just the typical turkey-potatoes-gravy fare of North American Thanksgiving and Christmas, we also got a healthy dose of perogies, cabbage rolls, and natchinka.

As an extremely picky eater, I’m still not sure how I was talked into eating cabbage rolls, but I did. And with gusto. In some cases I would go back for more helpings of just cabbage rolls and no perogies at the monthly Ukrainian hall-hosted dinners – much to the annoyance of the woman who my sister’s and I came to think of as the cabbage roll withholder. “Only two cabbage rolls, and only with a helping of perogies,” she would dictate, much to our annoyance. Apparently the “all you can eat” rule only applied to perogies…

To this day, I would never consider serving up anything but a cabbage roll and perogies feast for holidays – even though it inevitably means eating cabbage rolls for a week, since the recipe can’t really be halved or quartered. Oh well, the more cabbage rolls the better!

We Have Stubbornness Issues

As Douglas Coupland so aptly says: all families really are psychotic. Not because of some misfiring brain neurons, but because every family is comprised of all kinds of people who are forced into each others’ presences because of blood and DNA. Could you imagine if you were forced to spend time with your entire high school English class? That’s how random a mix every family is. Why should we expect families to get along when it’s obvious that the fashionista and the science nerd just aren’t meant to see eye to eye? Some people just aren’t meant to get along. Don’t force it, don’t fight about it, just accept your differences and move on. In the long run, the family you make is the one that really matters.