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Throughout this search, there have been noteworthy “coincidences” and
happenings, which have contributed significantly to its outcome. Put
together, these incidents have helped thread the process together to a
successful conclusion. Some of these are too strange to be told, but I
would sign an affidavit certifying their authenticity. Through them, I
have been connected to a part of my heritage, which I never paid much
attention to prior to searching for the man who fathered my mother.
At
the fateful haggis dinner in London, England in April 1996, when the
Scottish parts of my identity were first awakened, a clear, vivid thing
happened in my mind’s eye. As I ate the haggis, a long black bar
suddenly dropped from above me, hit an invisible horizontal barrier
above my head, then shattered into tiny specks before evaporating into
thin air. The color of the bar had an unusual density, and could be
described as blacker than black.
In
the instant it shattered, I knew what the black bar represented. These
were cruel and belittling words which had been thrown at my mother all
through her early life, simply because she was a half-breed. In the
times of my mother’s childhood and youth, half-breeds were an oddity
among Inuit, and were generally treated like outcasts. Some full-blooded
Inuit took liberties to ridicule Qallunaangajuit (part Qallunaat)
as being somehow inferior.
I had
not yet been born when the worst of this treatment was inflicted upon my
mother. I had never heard the taunts or cruel words being spoken. But,
as the flesh and blood of my mother, I somehow had to be put in touch
with her negative experiences, and this mental image was it. The purpose
of this, however, was also made very clear to me: Do not hold these
cruelties against the people who committed them! Forgive those who had
been trials and tribulations to your mother!
Forgiving these people was very easy for me; I didn’t even know who they
were, and most of them were long dead. A few times, I remember my mother
quietly recalling the mistreatment she received for being half
Qallunaaq. In those times, I would stop listening to her. I did not want
to know who had done this to her, for fear that I would seek revenge on
the children of those people.
The
act of forgiving was mental, but produced a wonderful feeling of
freedom, accompanied by an exhortation: “Be proud of who you are!” |
