Shakespeare wrote about man having seven stages. I feel as though I’ve gone through several stages of my own sense of citizenship. They all seem to center around Scotland and America and my mother and my father and my efforts to find myself somewhere within biological, emotional, spiritual and patriotic equations.

I always knew my father was American. I remember my mother telling me when I was quite young that even though I wasn’t "registered" as an American, a child had the right to take the father’s citizenship. I don’t know where she got that idea from, but I had no reason to disbelieve her. When my mother reversed what she had been telling me, when I was about nine years old, and told me "Your father’s living in America and doesn’t have anything to do with us," I determined at that time I was going to come to America some day and make a connection with my missing father. I was determined to find him.

For the next nine years, until I was 18 and met and married John Bleh and claimed my American citizenship, part of my heart was in a foreign place – even though I was loving my home country and developing a pride in Scotland and my own family’s heritage. Sometimes my friends called me "a half baked yank" because I wanted so much to find that American part of me.

Now I’m 53, and have been in America to all intents and purposes for over thirty years. I find my heart returning to my Scots origins. I think I’m feeling rootless in this country. My childhood friends and my twelve wonderful years as John’s wife are found only in fond memories. The last 22 years since John’s death are best described as my particular adventure in growing up which, often unfortunately, my children also had to join. And I recognize now that the skills and strengths which have helped me survive widowhood are founded on lessons learned in Scotland and from her people.

I remember saying to John once that I did not want to raise American children. I think I meant that I wanted to raise children who would honor their predominantly Celtic roots through my Scottish, Belgian and Welsh blood, as well as being proud to be Americans.

I think I have those Celtic origins entrenched in our seven children and their children. And I now find myself reaching back to Scotland to find myself again, not as the young girl who left in 1965, but as an adult woman who would like to preserve a little of the Scotland she knew for the people she loves.

I’m frequently asked if I would like to go back to live in Scotland. I know my life is better here, in America, financially and emotionally. I also know that the places I visit so frequently in my memory are more than likely no longer there as I remember them. The house I was born in, as a matter of fact, was demolished when I was about 15, as was my primary school and the pend across the street where I used to help groom the carters’ Clydesdales in the stables. I hear the economy is bad in my homeland, but we do have our own Parliament again. But, I do believe if I didn’t have children and grandchildren to hold me here, I would go "home," perhaps to stay.

But a visit to refresh my memories would be nice. And part of me would like to have my ashes scattered from above the Dundee Law so that on the day of resurrection, or reckoning (depending on whether I’ve been good or bad) John can come back to Dundee to find me.

I now understand that my brother and I were named after a fashion in the old Scottish way of naming children. My brother was named Jerome (his father’s name), Victor (his grandfather’s name) Eric (after my mother’s brother who died so sadly when he was 15.) I was named Charlotte (my mother’s mother) Marie (my father’s mother.) The traditional naming pattern is:

First son named after his father’s father
Second son named after his mother’s father
Third son named after his own father

First daughter named after her mother’s mother
Second daughter was named after her father’s mother
Third daughter named after her own mother.

I imagine if you were fourth or later sons or daughters you got original names. If John and I had done this with our children, I imagine our first four children would have been Carl, Caroline, Rose, Charlotte – and, who knows, after the first four I might have gotten the Scottish name Catriona (just because I’ve always loved that name) and the Welsh name Bronwen (after my best friend in Primary School) that John vetoed. But I didn’t take that veto too hard because I managed to get Tina and my Welsh Alys instead!