For Real Toads: Open Link, January 30

genetic memory:

is it real?

I went to Scotland

with Mom

and Dad

and the rest of the mob.

no one

felt it

except me, and I did

as soon

as the

we got off the plane.

I’m here,

I said,

I’m in Scotland,

I’m home

and I can feel it

in my bones.

*

I had nothing for Open Link Monday this week. I’ve been researching a subject dear to my heart—a kitchen renovation—and have therefore been distracted, but I read some submissions by other members of the writers’ group Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, so I could at least comment.

Mary (In the Corner of My Eye) wrote of one’s “primal landscape” which some of us, those of us who were fortunate enough to stay in one place for a large part of childhood, are said to possess.

Mary’s memories awakened my own, and, in so doing, reminded me of the way I felt the first and only time I visited Scotland.

I went with my parents, my siblings, and my siblings’ spouses. Mom was born a MacKenzie. Her ancestors were from the western Highlands. Grandma Davies was a Fraser from Aberdeen. Neither Mom nor Dad felt what I felt, although Dad had been very fond of Scotland when he visited relatives during his time there in World War II.
*

I know the sensation was real. It was the same feeling I’d always felt when I heard bagpipes, the feeling I thought everyone had about the pipes until I learned otherwise: a strong tug at the heartstrings; in the bloodstream, and in the very marrow of my bones.

Carl Jung, whose opinion I respect in certain other areas, called it racial memory, part of a collective unconsciousness.

I don’t intend to research it. I simply know it’s true. I’m not sure yet if the kitchen reno is true or not, so I’m going to keep working at that.