Run with the hare, chase with the foxes!

Run with the hare and chase with the foxes.  The last time I heard that saying I was probably a freckled faced child, running the neighbourhood and eavesdropping on the adult conversations around me.  All the while squirreling away biscuits and diluted orange.  Taking it all in by cultural osmosis and not really understanding what was meant.

Until it was turned around on me today.  Instinct was to balk, throw up blinkers, defend my position (whatever it was) and tell the world it was wrong.  I did at first of course...I was raging, wanted to throw back about 30 different retorts.  I started to and then took a step back and breathed, and if you know me at all you know that is unprecedented for me.  I don't step back!  No matter where right is sidled, I see red, I fire off and to hell with ramifications.

Let me reiterate...I DON'T step back!!!

No one has been able to tame that in me (bar my kids).  No man, no woman, no stranger on a bus with sage advice...no one.  Today, I stepped back; I breathed deep. I stopped being on the internet, watched a crappy yet brilliantly awful horror flick, put my neversleepsever lil un back to bed twice and sat.  I don't do that, I don't sit!

So, run with the hare, chase with the fox.  You know of course what it connotes, playing both sides of the coin, living two realities,  pleasing both sides.  Still having lived 19 formative years in one country, 3 in another and 13 in the next, I wonder if this is the legacy of the moving tenant.  It's certainly how I feel when I am willing to admit it.  Roots and hankering in one place, expected assimilation elsewhere.  When in Liverpool, UK I developed the most perfect scouse accent....to fit in.   Sort of yet not really.  Honestly it was so I could hail a cab and give an address without being thrust  awful, racist Paddy jokes or  being told, "won't drive Irish."  True story.

When I finally came to the US permanently in 1998, I did note those that had known me for years as a visitor suddenly expected different of me.  Comments that had been "cute" or ideas that were "quaint" were now considered dumb or unacceptable...I heard it from as young as a 10 year old "you're in America now, act like it!"

I tried so hard to fit in, assimilate I forgot basics, like pronunciation of similar words, stopped following the news at home in Ireland, my favourite sports teams.  I assimilated too hard, so to speak, hit the wall hard.  Still, I was not really accepted here in the US nor at home in Ireland when I visited on holiday (even now, I want to type vacation as well as holiday).  People here comment on my accent (still very muted), and in Ireland that I sound "like a yank."

Of course that is all periphery.  In reality the hare and the fox has a deeper meaning.  When one tries to assimilate, especially in a culture that doesn't just expect yet demands it,  it is easy to get lost in the smoke and mirrors...to please others; to make 'them' feel more comfortable.  Today I was called on that, on my complacence to put their feelings over my principals.  I'll be honest, it was a raw feeling and I would be lying if I said I am not still feeling a bit raw.  Nevertheless, it is a raw feeling worth sitting with.  So far, only one person has helped me do that, hate the cunt!