“Everyone” is an artist..”

My dad was born in a fairly uninteresting outer london place called "burnt oak" . On the tube its one stop before the end of the northern line (but potentially the end depending on how the trains are acting up on most days)

Lineage is a funny thing isn/t it? I think it is something that my generation (and those later) rarely think about, (unless adopted or in other newschool family arrangements that make parentage less clear). but perhaps i’m jumping in too soon. i should explain why the subject is on my mind at all. My family is disparate at best (on both sides) allegedly quite big but operating in a much smaller cliquier fashion. How do i start? My mother’s maiden name for example, the name is not a birth name of my grandfather, it is one he created specifically to differentiate his branch of the family from the others. he added to his surname a hyphenated suffix that means "the first" in his dialect. the first because he was the firstborn. thus the name that my uncles carry is one that exists nowhere else in our family and nowhere else in ghanian culture. when asked by an african of my mother’s maiden name they are often confused by my response,

My own surname is also a strange one. it is unusual to have the name quin with one n, and i often wonder if my paternal great grandfather did his own doctoring when he arrived in the country from ireland. but thats a question i have yet to find and answer for. it is my father’s side of the family that has recently thrown up the question of my being the end of the line.
it all began a few weeks ago. i have a second cousin on my father’s side who i rarely see, as he lives outside of london and isn’t terribly close to my father. i met him when I was 10 or 12 dreaming of moving to London, being older and a quite monied accountant he took it on himself to introduce his young cousin to the side of London my parents had not revealed to me. I remember buying tea and biscuits at fortnum and maison and seeing a rather stand out producton of arcadia at the opulent theatre royal. i was impressed and precocious and he enjoyed impressing me. i think he had already begun to see me as a rather "exotic" relation, being very different from the rest of our family

This second cousin of mine has a daughter, one who i have guessed to be even more spoiled in her upbringing than me (thus are the similaties between an only daughter and the youngest one). as said daughter has recently become married my second cousin thought it would be nice to have a get together of all the distant relations of our generation of the family. especially as most, if not all,have never met. and so i recieved a politely formal invitation to attend a luncheon in his private club in epsom surrey, home of polo and massive green overly tended lawns. i accepted the invitation in a similarly polite and formal manner and as much as i am invited in being exotic (mixed race, american, "creative", "urban", lesbian (well i dont’ think they know about that) and the youngest..) the prospect of the whole event seemed similarly (terrifyingly) exotic to me.

the african side of me sees family as a closer bigger entity. there is none of this 2nd, 3rd, 4th cousin twice removed business. all is simplified by age. is the relation older and not a sibling? they are an uncle or aunt. the same age? a cousin, younger? a nephew or niece.

the briitish side is more difficult. my grandfather was briliant, charismatic, and a ladies man. He married several times. i never met my biological grandmother, but i know she had a problem with my mum not being an intellectual, and then with being african. the woman my grandfather married before my childhood was the one i loved as my gran. My dad has two sisters. his half sister is my dearest aunt. his "whole" sister didn’t really approve of mum being black, and thus never formed a relation with me. all of this came to a terrifying head at my grandfathers funeral where i (aged 19) met most of my dad’s family for the first time. being the only black person in my dad’s family. and having had pictures of myself over the years in my grandad’s house, EVERYONE knew who i was. I had less obvious clues to my relations and found the whole experience even more painfull than it obviously was already.

funerals and weddings are these strange events that bring families together. the only closeness i felt was to my step-grandmother’s daughters. they were no blood relation to me but we were open to eachother, we smoked and they offered their scarves to dry my tears.
i coudn’t comprehend who all the others were.,,.

but back to the present, and the impending epsom luncheon.
today i came home to a guest list and family tree dictating how all were related to one another. staring at this family tree I was suddenlty struck by a realisation. I am the end of my great grandfather’s line. you see my great grandfather was the only one with children, he had two boys and two girls. of the two boy, my grandfather is the last with living relations. he had my father and my two aunts. i am an only child. and so I, the remaining quin stares at me from a web of branches.

this is made wierder for me by the fact that i am also the end of my mother’s lline. something that carries even more weight in ghanian culture. . in her culture a families lineage is determined through the women, why? the obsession is not with a name but with blood. and the only way to truly be sure that a child is of the families blood is if they are born from a woman of the familiy’s blood. the theory being a woman can say anyone is the father, but a mother can never fake her relationship to the child. and for my mum’s family i am the last daughter of a daughter. when my mum married my father the elders worried. how would a child born to a foreign man in a foreign place ever understand the importance of her worth to her family, to her culture?. rightly so. my mother never told me of this. it was my cousin who softly informed me years ago.

and to make this all the more ironic for both sides of my family i am born ..

a lesbian…

one of nature’s jokes perhaps? so what does it mean? i know many of my age and my culture would shrug and say "so what" but actually it makes me feel a powerful and important burden of blood that is difficult to ignore. i don’t have a definitvie answer to the kids question. my instinct has generally been against biologically having a child. i never thought about surnames and kids and marriage with real seriousness. but suddenly it seems very important to at least consider giving birth to a child (later…later) and at the very least for them to have a hyphenated version of my name. because it doesn’t seem right for my family (collectivelly) to end with me somehow.

in the meantime. what will i wear to this brisk "family" country club luncheon. the dress code on the invite says "smart casual jacket and tie optional" . the question is do i don the jacket or the tie? perhaps i go with braces…