On Mutts ... and Zebras

My family (of origin) moved a lot, like every two years or so. In each new town, I’d be asked where I came from, meaning what parentage we claimed. I used to think it was a way of asking what breed we were. My parents are from New England, I’d end up saying, we’re Yankees, because trying to describe my mother’s immigrant Finnish heritage and my father’s upright/uptight New England Unitarian genealogy going back generations was too difficult. To my father's parents, we must have been mutts: old blood & immigrant upstart. My son is a mutt and a half, born of myself (one mutt) and his Pakistani father (Pushto heritage, raised in Karachi, more of a displacement); my daughter, a sort of polyglot mutt: her father having German and English in various mixes on both sides, combining with my Yankee style Welsh-Finnish stew. Even my Finnish grandmother could have described my mom and her sisters as mutts, because their father, while Finnish, came from Swedish stock. Tsk, tsk, was the connotation.

I’d bet my bottom dollar that your family is part mutt, too.

and by the way: less than 12 hours! just can't wait!