Tartan

December 22, 2014

Greetings from my colors,

Coincidences are strands of serendipity woven together, that create a moment you would not predict or expect, or connect things that might otherwise be missed.  Where they come from varies.  Why they happen is something else.

There is a shelf in the top of my closet, one of those places where old sweaters go to retire, along with sailor hats and bachelor gloves and other bits that have no place else to belong.  I rarely have any reason to reach that high except to relegate another remnant from my life that I can’t decide what to do with.

Last week I got into a conversation with a friend about my Dad’s kilt.  I had to think about what it looked like, but of course it is woven from our family colors, the Smith Tartan.  It is not a subject that comes up very often.  There are no Scots in my daily life that might suggest it.  The subject then floated off into the fringe of my conscious waiting for inspiration.

And yesterday morning, looking for something else, I reached up into the purgatory shelf in my closet and my family tartan fell on me.

Several years ago on a trip through Scotland, I thought about buying a kilt, and the price changed my mind.  I settled for a wool scarf in my family tartan, a nice memento of my visit to my Dad’s homeland.  I put it away, never wore it, and hadn’t thought about it until yesterday when it landed on my head.

And then last night, my three sons added their weft to the fabric.  We stood in the kitchen talking about random things, each contributing something until we created a coincidence.

And Carson, in his best Scottish brogue came out with “Too rich for a poor Scotsman.” Which led Sawyer to ask if my Dad talked much about Scotland, and someone else asked if he spoke Gaelic.  And then someone asked about family tartans.  And then I felt something click in the fringe of my conscious.

I came downstairs with the wool scarf from Edinburgh.

Sawyer asked: “Is that where you got our colors?”  I had to focus for a minute to think what he meant, but then I knew.  When the boys were born we gave them colors to keep track of them, to know who had been fed or changed.  As they grew older they colors stayed with them to organize belongings, avoid turf wars.  Harrison Green.  Carson Blue.  Sawyer Red.

They are primary colors, it’s not like we had a million to choose from.  But suddenly the colors in the tartan popped out; Red blue and green.

It is a scrap of wool fabric, woven in five colors.  For hundreds of years it has represented a clan in Scotland; a family, a society.  For a time, it was an icon that inspired passions that surpassed brotherhood, bonded thousands together in fealty that lasted generations.  It has not been relevant in my life, but just holding the tartan that my Dad claimed, and his father before him, I felt a connection that passed through me to the generation that stood in my kitchen.

It seems archaic, and maybe a little romantic, but this is my clan.  These are our colors.

I have no way of knowing if I have anything in common with other Smiths from Scotland, or if they would make good neighbors, or if I would trust them to water the plants while I was out of town or call them for a ride to the airport.  I am not naïve enough to think that just coming from the same hills on an island in the Atlantic means we are going to have a meaningful relationship.

But there is something there, a link to something larger than me.  It is something to belong to, which we all seek at different times.  It is our tribe, our people, our kin, our history, where we come from.  What makes it important to me is that Katherine, Carson, Harrison and Sawyer now will look back at this lineage, woven into green and blue and black and gold and red, and see themselves in it too.  They are better for it, and so are all of us in the clan.

I don’t dwell on coincidences.  They happen.  The why behind them will remain a mystery, at least in this existence.  I am grateful for this scrap of serendipity because for a window of time it brought my Dad into the room with my children, held there by a piece of woven wool, and our memories of him.  That is why enough for me.

Hope this finds you with your clan,

David

Copyright © 2014 David Smith