Really from?

My family name:

a string of letters,
syllables learned from birth.

I grew up to church bells ringing
and wind eddying from the seashore
where all journeys begin and end.

Having come to rest
on this square yard of planet

after years of motion, 

a traveller in space and time,

I dare to stand here 

and show my face.

And still you have to ask me 

where I am from, you and I, both,

survivors born into moving lines 

of birth that join the past 

to the living present.

© BH, 2022

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A nod to the Lady Susan Hussey business. Asking someone, no, insisting they explain, where they're really from. Not taking the immediate answer as satisfactory.

Pure rudeness. Of course, race was involved, and/or class. I dare say it equates with that line of question that tries to determine if you're family name connects to some well-bred branch of the Home Counties lineages.

I, for example, would have to assure someone that I was one of the Malvern Hills and not just a ragged-arsed Jock descended from the Coreen Hills just south of Huntly. My florid and weather-beaten complexion would be less of a signifier of my origins of course. But, to be frank, it shouldn't matter.

We're all out of the Horn of Africa, as it happens. By circuitous routes. 'Aa Jock Tamson's bairns'.