Roots

Roots are strange things. Perhaps the desire to know more about our own explain why people are having their DNA tested and searching records for their ancestors.

If anyone had asked my mother what nationality she was, she would have said, "English." She was born in Wakefield, MA and had only lived in the area except for a short stint in Bluefield, West Virginia, which to her was a foreign land.

My father? She considered him French and foreign. He had been born in Nova Scotia but took American nationality in 1925. Ask him his nationality he would say with pride, "American."

If I traced my family roots to the old countries, Michel Boudreau left LaRochelle, France in 1640. My mothers ancestors arrived in New England in 1636 on the Blessing. It sailed from London.

I left the U.S. permanently in 1990, became Swiss in 2006 and painfully gave up my American citizenship in 2011.

Roots are not a passport. They are a state of mind.

Some people never venture far from home. Others roam the world never putting down "new roots."

A word for "new roots" could be "integrating." That means adapting to the new culture, its ways, making friends, participating in local activities.

Almost all cities have their ethnic neighborhoods, where food, friends, customs, values and events are similar to the old country. When expats are asked what they miss, it is often the food.

My daughter gave me the Boston Roots decoration because she knows my roots will always be New England Yankee or even Bostonian. However, I've put down roots in Switzerland and also in southern France. 

If I had to describe myself nationally, I would say I was an international. Over the decades I've picked up traces of being a Scot, a German, a Swiss, a French. There are places in these countries, where I could live and put down new roots, but the roots would grown from those already there. 

We had our dog Sherlock's DNA done to discover his roots besides being Catalan. That was the area in France where we discovered him as a rescue pup.