Why the Most Important Things I Have Learned In England Are Actually Things I Could Have Learned In Pittsburgh ... N'at

My father’s side of the family has always been famous for a certain amount of good-natured troublemaking. Those readers who know me personally but who do not know my family may be somewhat skeptical of this claim. After all, unless there is karaoke, I tend to be reserved and well behaved to the point of being a little boring. I have heard this from people who should, theoretically, be telling me to have a little less fun at the age of nineteen, including but not limited to my parents, my grandparents, older cousins who appear to the rest of the world to be responsible adults with mortgages and children, high school teachers, and college professors.  I may be the only college junior in the United States with a chorus of authority figures and role models telling her to lighten up.

Other members of the F family haven’t exactly gotten this kind of encouragement, mostly because they haven’t needed it.

For instance, my father and his older brother were both sent to a pre-seminary preparatory school by my grandmother, who desperately wanted one of her sons to become a Catholic priest. However, at least one of their classmates saw that this probably wasn’t the best idea, as evidenced by the following yearbook inscription, which I found in my father’s yearbook from his last year at the school: “Deliver us from the F-s”.  Neither brother made it through pre-seminary. Both returned to Pittsburgh, married, and converted to Protestantism, gravely disappointing their mother, at least until the arrival of grandchildren. My uncle had two sons who, while managing to be responsible adults, loving husbands, and good parents, continue the family tradition of having fun and not sweating the proverbial small stuff. I, my father's only child, have never been quite as good at those things.

My high school yearbook inscriptions conveyed a somewhat different message than my father's. Most of them can be summed up in one word: Relax. Regardless of my other accomplishments, I, SLF, was not living up to the family legacy.

So last night, on the way home from my study abroad program’s holiday party, as I sat on a public bus wearing a novelty moustache, carrying a picture of a local church, laughing freely, and cradling my present from the gift exchange – three bottles of microbrewed local beer – I realized that, among all the experiences I have had during my time abroad so far, perhaps the most important was not adjusting to English culture or writing brilliant literary essays but coming into my own as a member of the F family. 

Though I’ve always displayed my monogram proudly on anything that I could, I have finally earned that last letter.