On Being a Scot in California, Blogging with One Hand
Why did I decide to blog?
On Wednesday, August 13 2003, I read Amanda Hesser's article on Julie Powell in the 'Dining Out' section of the New York Times and, like so many others, was fascinated by the Julia/Julie Project. I accessed Julie's blog straight away. Amanda had warned that "some of Julie's language, in person and on her web log is very rough." I actually found it refreshing and agree with Amanda that "Some of it is very funny." That was my introduction to blogging. Now I will introduce myself.
On Being a Scot
I grew up in a herring fishing family in Buckie, a fishing port on the Moray Firth coast of North East Scotland. There is more on Buckie and the fishing industry at www.buckieheritage.org, the website of the Buckie and District Fishing Heritage Museum.
I am often asked if I miss Scotland. My answer is always "No! Scotland is a portable country and I've taken it with me." Often, Americans tell me they are from 'ScAtland' too, and are 'ScAts,' but when I ask where in ScOtland they were born, they admit that they were born in USA, of 'ScAttish' ancestry. It is surprising that they often have no idea where in 'ScAtland' their 'ScAttish' ancestors came from. But their pride in their heritage is never in question.
I speak, and write, 'The Doric,' the dialect/language of North East Scotland and I'll nae doot (no doubt) blog in dialect, with translation.
In California
I have lived near Berkeley, California, with Richard, my Sassenach husband, for 25 years. We've been married 30 years. Richard had a 2-year NATO fellowship to do research in fuzzy logic at UC Berkeley. We had been living happily in Cambridge, UK, where Richard received a Ph.D. and we had a house there, but the second I got off the plane at SFO, I felt I had come home an have had the same feeling ever since.
Blogging with One Hand
I'm a one-handed, left hand only, typist. I was born with cerebral palsy, which affects my right side. My right hand has life of its own and refuses to be controlled. The first memory I have of my life is the moment I became aware that I could not use my right hand.
I am 3 years old and I am kneeling in front of a little stool, in the living room, where a low fire is burning in the open grate, even though it is summer. The summers in North East Scotland can be cool and our house, an old fisherman's cottage, has small, curtained windows, which does not let in much sunlight to warm the room. (There is a picture of the house at the BDFHM website, mentioned above, on the 'Oor Margit' page there.)
A drawing book with blank pages lies open on the stool. My right hand has a tight grip on a fat, red, over-sized pencil and I was straining to 'draw' on the paper. The pencil is a gift, brought back from someone's annual seaside holiday and had the words, "A Present From Great Yarmouth." I knew that's what the words were only because I had heard Mam say that Auntie Joyce had gone to Great Yarmouth for her summer holiday and it must have been she who brought the pencil back, oversized, to 'help' me grip it.
A generic adult stands over me, giving stern instructions. "Hold the pencil in your BAD hand and draw a picture!" She frowns when the pencil flies out of my hand for the umpteenth time and I reach for it with my left hand. "No! Don't pick it up with you GOOD hand! You have to use your BAD hand, otherwise it will never be a GOOD hand!"
So, as children learn to distinguish between good and bad, right from wrong, and left from right, I learned that left was good, right was bad, but it was wrong that it should be so.
Kneeling there, I tried very hard to make my bad hand a good one and concentrated hard on holding the pencil, but once more it flew out of my hand in a palsied uncontrollable spasm, which was no doubt exacerbated by my distress. I tried to show the adult the controlled scribbles I had created with my left hand, but my left-handed accomplishments were of no interest and her emphasis was only on what I was failing to do. I screamed in a tantrum of frustration at my futile exertions and inability to explain to adult sternness and disapproval that there should be no anger involved in my disability. I was proud of what my left hand could do. What was so important about being perfect? At 3 years old, I could accept myself as is, why couldn't they? Perhaps they thought I was disobedient for being disabled.
6:17:37 PM 
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