Il ne peut pas être !

The world is a very small place.  There is something to be said for naivete, in its protection of some innocence, but then again a person could be walking around with that-can't-be thoughts.  Then reality slaps you in the face.  Kids think that cartoons are real and that when you play peek-a-boo the other person really disappears.  So here I am in my 30s thinking that penguins could fly if they'd try harder and lose some weight, and that my mom and dad weren't already related.  Lo and behold, Dad's mom and Mom's families share a blood line, and it isn't my sister and I.  No, il ne peut pas etre, it cannot be!  But it is.

They say that many Huguenots left on the same boat from La Rochelle to Charleston, and among them the Marions and the de St. Juliens.  Helen [de] St. Julien Marion was the daughter of Francis Marion's brother, her mother a de St. Julien.  Her family name has been passed all the way down to my dad's mom, Marian.  William [de] St. Julien Mazyck was the father of my mom's great grandmother Ann.  I have her long, French nose, known as the "Mazyck beak."  It is quite possible that Helen and William were as close as brother and sister.  Il ne peut pas etre, but it is.

My godmother made the suggestion that the French Huguenot cross of the French "Presbyterians" would make an excellent tatt.  It is beautiful for its artistry alone, but this symbol, worn by the members of the American French Huguenot Society, hearkons back to the persecution and blood shed that went down when people chose to leave the Roman Catholic Church during the Protestant Reformation.  We don't think on it now, but Catholics and Protestants in the old country (Ireland, for example) don't care for one another.  Somebody's always right, and somebody's always wrong.  Wasn't it Bob Marley who said, "Let's get together and feel alright."

The United States, from its beginnings as a string of English colonies, was and is the last safe haven on earth for those persecuted.  The freedom to embrace free will without the interruption of someone else's edict (such as the Edict of Nantes, which declared French Protestants heretics), to be one's own man so to speak, is a glorious thing.  My husbands family had to flee their homeland too and come to America because of persecution.  And here, like the countless others including Albert Einstein, they thrived.  Why'd they come here?  Because tt can be, anything can be, thanks to our forefathers, thanks to who fought and took a stand.  I think a "highly spiced filling" may be a pre-requisite.

Brigadier General Francis Marion, the grandson of immigrants

 

Reverend William Barnwell and Ann Serurier Mazyck

(check out that nose)