As a little boy I always looked forward to special Christmas and birthday presents from my “Auntie Etta” – usually a book with a personal note inscribed on the inside cover, accompanied by the “x’s and o’s” of kisses and hugs. As with most small children it was about the gift and not the giver, but as I grew I learned that Aunt Etta was the sister of my Glasgow-born grandmother, Mary. Mary was the youngest of nine children – the last born and the last to die. Somewhere among my mother’s keepsakes is a Victorian-era picture of my grandmother’s school class, and even now she is easy to pick out among all of those dour turn-of-the-century Scot faces.

Mary immigrated with her husband John (born in Portree on the Isle of Skye) to the US in the 1920s. The ties to “the old country” remained, with letters and (later) an occasional phone call traversing the Atlantic. Even though she lived in the US for 50 years, and adopted US customs and attitudes, my grandmother never lost traces of her Glaswegian accent, her deep underlying faith, and her very practical but sometimes humorous Scot sensibility.

Long before the onset of identity politics, my mother (who is a British subject) and in turn myself were raised to be Americans, with an appreciation of our family’s Scot heritage. We still keep in touch with family there. Familial connections, personal sensibilities – my own and those inherited from my grandmother – and a sporadic atavistic desire to permanently return to the land of my forefathers drives me to pay attention to Scottish affairs.
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