Render unto Mommy the things that are Mommy’s

02 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by Virginia Smith in Family history, Humor/humour, Parenting

Of course, there's chronological age, and mental age.

Of course, there’s chronological age, and there’s emotional age.

For years, my 19-year-old daughter has been “borrowing” (and not returning) things belonging to me: my bicycle, my t-shirts, my necklaces, my leather boots, my–well, you get the idea. Basically, anything that takes her fancy that’s not locked down. She’s now in college, so my access to my own things has dramatically and happily revived, once I went through her college-bound duffel bags last September and retrieved all my stuff.

My UGGs

But now my 11-year-old daughter has sprouted, and I am finding myself “sharing” my possessions with this new interloper: the pristine UGGs that I found at a thrift store for $40 two months ago, the t-shirts, the small bit of make-up that hasn’t already been acquired by the 19-year-old and, as of two nights ago, my nightgown, because she suddenly decided that she no longer likes sleeping in pajamas. I am now stomping around bootless in freezing weather while she walks to school in my UGGs, the sheepskin caressing her toes. Not to mention the fact that I’m tossing and turning at night in a pair of flannel pants and a sweatshirt instead of my comfy nightgown which now envelopes her as she gently drifts to sleep.

But, blessedly, my third child is a boy, so my possessions–at least my clothes–are safe. You would think.

No, this isn't me, it's a model from the catalogue, but thank you for asking.

No, this isn’t me, it’s a model from the catalogue, but thank you for thinking that it’s me.

I have two pairs of khaki trousers. Two. I love these pants; they fit well, and they look as good as they can on my middle-aged body.

The last time I saw my khakis they were upstairs in a box with all my spring/summer clothes. I was looking forward in the next month or two to shucking off the corduroys that I’ve worn throughout this god-awful, freezing cold winter, and breaking out the khakis.

But one night several weeks ago, I saw a pair of khakis on the lower half of my son. They looked familiar, and then it dawned on me. He was wearing my beloved khakis!

I told him in no uncertain terms to return my pants to the box, which he did. But I have just looked, and they are gone.

Ten minutes ago, my son called from the airport. And told me where my khakis are.

My khakis are sitting (or are being sat on) in seat 24B.

They are on a flight to the Dominican Republic.

More specifically: they are on the nether portion of my 17-year-old son who is on a flight to the Dominican Republic. My son, who is 6 feet tall and 180 very muscular, hunky pounds–seven inches taller and over thirty pounds heavier than me.

He is flying through the night, away from the snow that is blanketing New England and into the sun of a tropical island. Wearing my pants.

This is the teensiest bit misleading because my khakis will actually be spending their time in the poorest part of the DR and not on these amazing beaches.

Which he will no doubt wear while he works for the next two weeks with schoolchildren in Santo Domingo, stretching my lovely khakis all the while to fit his large physique. My beloved khakis will never be the same.

And you know the worst thing about all of this? Besides the fact that I’ve lost yet another cherished possession to one of my children, the very worst thing is that my son looks better in my khakis than I do!

Other musings on child-rearing: Stupid things parents do; The suckiness of having to model good behavior to your kids; Lies parents tell their children; The things she lost: sign of the times; Letting go and emotional rescue

Where are you from?

22 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by Virginia Smith in Crich and the farms, Family history, US vs UK

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Genealogy; surnames, world family names

I have just come across a really cool website that I want to tell you about.

It’s called “World Family Names,” at http://worldnames.publicprofiler.org and it shows the frequency of surnames in 26 countries around the world in relation to the overall population.

The countries are: US, UK, Canada, Japan, India, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.

The maps use data for approximately 300 million people in 26 countries of the world, representing a total population of 1 billion people in those countries. There are 8 million unique surnames in this database.

Plug in your own surname, or surnames of family members and/or friends, and you will see where people with this surname live around the world, in greater or lesser numbers. (I tried first with names of friends, including Ngom (a Senegalese name), Kaplansky, Lofstrom, Quint, Kovacs, and Zimman, and got interesting results).

I also tried my last name, Smith, one of the commonest last names in the English-speaking world.

Not surprisingly, the bluest of the blue areas shows that there are many “Smith”s as a percentage of the overall population in the UK and also in Australia, where many people of British ancestry–including members of my own family–live. The US and Canada weighs in after that, not surprising when you figure that both these countries were originally colonized by the British (along with, of course, the Native Americans, who were there first, and the Spaniards and the French.)

Then I checked to see where in the UK the greatest concentration of Smiths are:

Gratifyingly, the greatest number of “Smith”s are right where I’d expect them to be, in the Midlands, which encompasses Derbyshire, my parents’ home county, and which would include members of my immediate family, a number who are farmers and so are not at all mobile and at least two generations ago tended to have very large families to help with all the work on the farm.

But now take a look at my mother’s family, surname Wallis:

I know that there are relatively few Wallises in the world, save for a long-ago Wallis who was a famous mathematician, another who circumnavigated the globe, and one American charismatic Christian called Jim all of whom, as far as I know, are no relation to us.

I wanted to see where the Wallises lived in the UK, and if there was a clumping in Derbyshire, where my mother was born, but I found that there are relatively few Wallises in Derbyshire; most of them are grouped on the east and south coasts of England.

The fact that there’s a clumping in the south and east of England makes sense, if you know that those Wallises (those who were not originally “Wallace”s which is a completely different name) are most likely to have been French people of the name “De Walys” who came over to England in the Norman Conquest in 1066, and who probably remained in the part of England closest to France.

Now, plug in your family surname(s), and see where it takes you!