Revelations, Part 3: Gratitude, Thy Name is Shannon

Adoption is an amazing and beautiful thing, but it can also be a double-edged sword honed in contradiction.  An adoptee is ultimately the product of two entirely different realities, one of which is more often than not an unknown quantity. As a result, most of us spend our lives wondering where we came from, wondering "what if."  It doesn't mean we don't love or appreciate our adoptive family; quite the reverse is usually true.  But it does mean we will always wonder where and how we fit into the world, and it does mean that we will always be aware that a part of our identity is missing like lost pieces from a jigsaw puzzle.  Even growing up in happy homes, some of us may feel like we were rejected or abandoned by our birth parents, while some of us may feel a bit like aliens in a strange land.

I was fortunate in that my adoptive family made a point of telling my brother and I about our adoptions long before we had the first clue what it meant to even be adopted.  As a result, we grew up considering it little more than another fact of our existence, like having blue eyes or dimples.  At least I did...I can't really speak for my brother.

I grew up knowing I was loved and "chosen," and my childhood was mostly happy (puberty notwithstanding).  But I still often felt like my parents didn't entirely understand me, not the least because my interests and abilities so diverged from their own.  It's not that they didn't try to be supportive, it's just that they had simply no frame of reference for understanding or dealing with someone like me. I was an anomaly, and I knew it. A loved anomaly, but an anomaly nonetheless.

We all search for identity in one way or another, and adoptees more than most. I can remember being asked by the woman who helped me find my birth mother what I thought it would be like to "see photos of people who look like you."  Flummoxed, I had no answer for her.  Even after finally deciding to search for my birth parents, the possibility of finding people who might look like me had never once crossed my mind.  I was far too used to looking either like no one or like everyone; I forever seem to remind people I meet of some random other person that they know.  Visible Anonymity.  Even when I found Norma 5 years ago and my half-sister Robin just a couple months ago, I discovered that I didn't really look like them either.  I was still a mystery, as was much of my heritage--"my heritage" being the operative phrase.

By the time my genealogy course started in September, I had already tested with all the major DNA/genealogy testing sites in my effort to find connections and to solve the mystery of my parentage.  Over the summer, on a whim, I tested with a less well-known company called MyHeritage; I figured since I'd already gone this far, I might as well make a clean sweep of all the testing companies, even this one.  Honestly, I didn't expect much to come of it.

Approximately 5 weeks after I first learned the identity of my birth father, Donald Tolin, I was checking my email in front of the television.  One of the first messages was from MyHeritage; as I had never received a notification that my test had finished processing, I was more than a little surprised to see a subject line boldly proclaiming that I "had a DNA match."  I opened that message on October 8th, which will forevermore be the day my story changed.

That match was for someone named "Shannon Moore Tolin Parrish" who, like Robin, was listed as a possible half-sibling. Seeing the name "Tolin" was enough to send my heart racing; seeing "half-sibling" was something else again.  This time it was my discovery, not someone else's.  I immediately contacted the person administrating this Shannon's test, whose name was Rose.  We emailed back and forth for a couple of weeks while Rose worked on uploading Shannon's raw data to GEDmatch and while we tried to find a mutually convenient time to call. Rose and I settled on the October 21st; I spent most of that afternoon trying to will my phone to ring like Darth Vader Force-choking one of his minions.

Finally Rose called. She gave me Shannon's kit number for GEDmatch and, with Rose right there on the phone, I ran the X-comparison same as I'd done with Robin.  Shannon and I matched even more cM than I had with Robin.

I had another sister.

And, according to Rose, that sister was an awesome individual.

Shannon <3

I have to say, Rose is a woman after my own heart.  A fellow genealogy geek, she and I chatted for a good hour or two, laughing and comparing notes.  I liked her right away; Rose is good people.  From Rose I learned that not only did Donald Tolin have the three legitimate children I'd already uncovered, he also had two older sons I'd known nothing about.  From me Rose learned about Robin and that we all probably have yet another half-brother who was born some 8 months before me (though I haven't been able to contact him yet to confirm or deny).  Rose also learned about some of Donald's more dubious escapades from the newspaper articles I had ferreted out.  Basically my birth father sired enough children to field his own baseball team.

As we were ending the call, Rose asked if it was okay to pass along my contact information to Shannon (duh!).  I was breathless and a little dizzy...everything felt so different this time.

Less than 24 hours later, on October 22nd, I spoke to my sister Shan for the first time.  I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that Shan and I clicked from the very start. Violently. Audibly.  Really, really audibly. Like the sound of a bazooka being cocked and then fed through the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's speaker array in a small room constructed of stainless steel walls and sitting atop a pounding locomotive.  I don't know if it's because we are both adoptees or because of our particular recombination of DNA or what, but I felt a deep and instantaneous kinship with this woman. She is nothing less than the missing piece of my heart.

That first chat was just under 5 weeks past, but it already seems like a lifetime ago.  There is so much I still need and want to learn about Shan and her family, but it already feels like I've known and loved her my entire life. Chatting with Shan in real time has been a challenge, because she is currently deeply ensconced in an intensive cooking school in Ireland (!!) that will basically qualify her to be a chef when she's finished if she so chooses.

I am in awe of Shannon on a daily basis.  She is so creative and so talented in so many ways and even more beautiful inside than she is outside (which is stunning enough); she outclasses me in virtually every way possible.  She is a fighter and a survivor, yet has enough joy and energy and exuberance to give the girlie a run for her money.  She loves fiercely and forever.  I am prouder of her than she will ever know and humbled that I now get to be a part of her orbit.  I can't wait till we are able to meet in person at long last.

Shannon herself is a gift beyond price, but generous to a fault as she is, Shan has also given me back my missing history.  As a young woman, she did the hardcore, pre-Internet research required to find her birth parents.  Success follows that woman everywhere she goes. I get Irony laughing and pointing at me from the corner while she lives out wildly improbable adventures and achieves accolades and honors the rest of us could only dream about. As a result of her successful searching, Shan had several years of getting to know our birth father and, while it didn't turn out as she may have hoped (let's just say our father wasn't exactly the most upstanding of men and leave it at that), her experiences with him have made it possible for her to fill in missing pieces of myself I thought I'd never get to know. For example, my baby fine hair and my jacked-up teeth are direct legacies of our birth father, as are my intelligence, my love of words, and any small musical ability I may have (actually, there is music on both sides of my birth family).  No doubt there are many more genetic quirks I have yet to learn.

Donald Tolin, sporting our big Chicklet front teeth.

Shan also sent me pictures so I could see my birth father for the very first time.  I still stare at them in disbelief because when I look at those photos, I see my own face staring back at me.  I don't just favor our father, I practically AM him (physically, at least).  Virtually every photo I see of him instantly reminds me of a photo I have in an album somewhere with an identical pose and/or expression.  It's surreal.  What's even more unnerving is the fact that Donald Tolin's youngest son, who was born a scant four months before me, is basically my clone.  Frankly, it's unnerving. Even without DNA tests confirming my connection to the family thru sisters and cousins and half-nephews, Shan's photos alone provide more than sufficient evidence that Donald Tolin was my father.  I don't know if I will ever get over the uncanniness of the resemblance between Donald, myself, and his son.  It's just plain freaky.  Freakier still is that Don died in May, just two weeks after my birth mother Norma.  (You seriously can't make this shit up.)

My birth father and me. I was 17, he was around 18-20.

My half-brother, about age 14, and me at 17.

Me and my half-brother as sophomores in high school, or possibly auditioning for Clone Wars.

Thanksgiving is all about being grateful for the things and people that give our lives meaning. Well, that and egregious gluttony and the inevitable tryptophan comas which follow said gluttony.

I am always grateful for my family and friends both far and near: my brother, my in-laws who've put up with me for over three decades, my fantastic nieces and nephews, my amazingly supportive Posse and Divas--who make all things easier--and of course for my brilliant daughter, who both amazes and confounds me on a near-daily basis.  I am blessed to have had the smallest part in her upbringing (though I'm still not entirely sure who raised whom), and I can't wait to see what she does next.  I adore you all.

This Thanksgiving, however, I am especially grateful for my new sister Shan and for all she brings to my life: knowledge, openness, generosity, light, hope, love, joy, grace, history, a passel of talented and hilarious cousins who have welcomed me with open arms (and two of whom I once lived a mere 184 feet from without ever knowing it), a new brother-in-law nicknamed "Sweet Daddy," and a glorious trio of talented and heartwarming niece and nephews. Shannon is completion...I am at last whole because of her, and I love her unreservedly.

My heart is full.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Revelations, Part 3: Gratitude, Thy Name is Shannon

Adoption is an amazing and beautiful thing, but it can also be a double-edged sword honed in contradiction.  An adoptee is ultimately the product of two entirely different realities, one of which is more often than not an unknown quantity. As a result, most of us spend our lives wondering where we came from, wondering "what if."  It doesn't mean we don't love or appreciate our adoptive family; quite the reverse is usually true.  But it does mean we will always wonder where and how we fit into the world, and it does mean that we will always be aware that a part of our identity is missing like lost pieces from a jigsaw puzzle.  Even growing up in happy homes, some of us may feel like we were rejected or abandoned by our birth parents, while some of us may feel a bit like aliens in a strange land.

I was fortunate in that my adoptive family made a point of telling my brother and I about our adoptions long before we had the first clue what it meant to even be adopted.  As a result, we grew up considering it little more than another fact of our existence, like having blue eyes or dimples.  At least I did...I can't really speak for my brother.

I grew up knowing I was loved and "chosen," and my childhood was mostly happy (puberty notwithstanding).  But I still often felt like my parents didn't entirely understand me, not the least because my interests and abilities so diverged from their own.  It's not that they didn't try to be supportive, it's just that they had simply no frame of reference for understanding or dealing with someone like me. I was an anomaly, and I knew it. A loved anomaly, but an anomaly nonetheless.

We all search for identity in one way or another, and adoptees more than most. I can remember being asked by the woman who helped me find my birth mother what I thought it would be like to "see photos of people who look like you."  Flummoxed, I had no answer for her.  Even after finally deciding to search for my birth parents, the possibility of finding people who might look like me had never once crossed my mind.  I was far too used to looking either like no one or like everyone; I forever seem to remind people I meet of some random other person that they know.  Visible Anonymity.  Even when I found Norma 5 years ago and my half-sister Robin just a couple months ago, I discovered that I didn't really look like them either.  I was still a mystery, as was much of my heritage--"my heritage" being the operative phrase.

By the time my genealogy course started in September, I had already tested with all the major DNA/genealogy testing sites in my effort to find connections and to solve the mystery of my parentage.  Over the summer, on a whim, I tested with a less well-known company called MyHeritage; I figured since I'd already gone this far, I might as well make a clean sweep of all the testing companies, even this one.  Honestly, I didn't expect much to come of it.

Approximately 5 weeks after I first learned the identity of my birth father, Donald Tolin, I was checking my email in front of the television.  One of the first messages was from MyHeritage; as I had never received a notification that my test had finished processing, I was more than a little surprised to see a subject line boldly proclaiming that I "had a DNA match."  I opened that message on October 8th, which will forevermore be the day my story changed.

That match was for someone named "Shannon Moore Tolin Parrish" who, like Robin, was listed as a possible half-sibling. Seeing the name "Tolin" was enough to send my heart racing; seeing "half-sibling" was something else again.  This time it was my discovery, not someone else's.  I immediately contacted the person administrating this Shannon's test, whose name was Rose.  We emailed back and forth for a couple of weeks while Rose worked on uploading Shannon's raw data to GEDmatch and while we tried to find a mutually convenient time to call. Rose and I settled on the October 21st; I spent most of that afternoon trying to will my phone to ring like Darth Vader Force-choking one of his minions.

Finally Rose called. She gave me Shannon's kit number for GEDmatch and, with Rose right there on the phone, I ran the X-comparison same as I'd done with Robin.  Shannon and I matched even more cM than I had with Robin.

I had another sister.

And, according to Rose, that sister was an awesome individual.

Shannon <3

I have to say, Rose is a woman after my own heart.  A fellow genealogy geek, she and I chatted for a good hour or two, laughing and comparing notes.  I liked her right away; Rose is good people.  From Rose I learned that not only did Donald Tolin have the three legitimate children I'd already uncovered, he also had two older sons I'd known nothing about.  From me Rose learned about Robin and that we all probably have yet another half-brother who was born some 8 months before me (though I haven't been able to contact him yet to confirm or deny).  Rose also learned about some of Donald's more dubious escapades from the newspaper articles I had ferreted out.  Basically my birth father sired enough children to field his own baseball team.

As we were ending the call, Rose asked if it was okay to pass along my contact information to Shannon (duh!).  I was breathless and a little dizzy...everything felt so different this time.

Less than 24 hours later, on October 22nd, I spoke to my sister Shan for the first time.  I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that Shan and I clicked from the very start. Violently. Audibly.  Really, really audibly. Like the sound of a bazooka being cocked and then fed through the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's speaker array in a small room constructed of stainless steel walls and sitting atop a pounding locomotive.  I don't know if it's because we are both adoptees or because of our particular recombination of DNA or what, but I felt a deep and instantaneous kinship with this woman. She is nothing less than the missing piece of my heart.

That first chat was just under 5 weeks past, but it already seems like a lifetime ago.  There is so much I still need and want to learn about Shan and her family, but it already feels like I've known and loved her my entire life. Chatting with Shan in real time has been a challenge, because she is currently deeply ensconced in an intensive cooking school in Ireland (!!) that will basically qualify her to be a chef when she's finished if she so chooses.

I am in awe of Shannon on a daily basis.  She is so creative and so talented in so many ways and even more beautiful inside than she is outside (which is stunning enough); she outclasses me in virtually every way possible.  She is a fighter and a survivor, yet has enough joy and energy and exuberance to give the girlie a run for her money.  She loves fiercely and forever.  I am prouder of her than she will ever know and humbled that I now get to be a part of her orbit.  I can't wait till we are able to meet in person at long last.

Shannon herself is a gift beyond price, but generous to a fault as she is, Shan has also given me back my missing history.  As a young woman, she did the hardcore, pre-Internet research required to find her birth parents.  Success follows that woman everywhere she goes. I get Irony laughing and pointing at me from the corner while she lives out wildly improbable adventures and achieves accolades and honors the rest of us could only dream about. As a result of her successful searching, Shan had several years of getting to know our birth father and, while it didn't turn out as she may have hoped (let's just say our father wasn't exactly the most upstanding of men and leave it at that), her experiences with him have made it possible for her to fill in missing pieces of myself I thought I'd never get to know. For example, my baby fine hair and my jacked-up teeth are direct legacies of our birth father, as are my intelligence, my love of words, and any small musical ability I may have (actually, there is music on both sides of my birth family).  No doubt there are many more genetic quirks I have yet to learn.

Donald Tolin, sporting our big Chicklet front teeth.

Shan also sent me pictures so I could see my birth father for the very first time.  I still stare at them in disbelief because when I look at those photos, I see my own face staring back at me.  I don't just favor our father, I practically AM him (physically, at least).  Virtually every photo I see of him instantly reminds me of a photo I have in an album somewhere with an identical pose and/or expression.  It's surreal.  What's even more unnerving is the fact that Donald Tolin's youngest son, who was born a scant four months before me, is basically my clone.  Frankly, it's unnerving. Even without DNA tests confirming my connection to the family thru sisters and cousins and half-nephews, Shan's photos alone provide more than sufficient evidence that Donald Tolin was my father.  I don't know if I will ever get over the uncanniness of the resemblance between Donald, myself, and his son.  It's just plain freaky.  Freakier still is that Don died in May, just two weeks after my birth mother Norma.  (You seriously can't make this shit up.)

My birth father and me. I was 17, he was around 18-20.

My half-brother, about age 14, and me at 17.

Me and my half-brother as sophomores in high school, or possibly auditioning for Clone Wars.

Thanksgiving is all about being grateful for the things and people that give our lives meaning. Well, that and egregious gluttony and the inevitable tryptophan comas which follow said gluttony.

I am always grateful for my family and friends both far and near: my brother, my in-laws who've put up with me for over three decades, my fantastic nieces and nephews, my amazingly supportive Posse and Divas--who make all things easier--and of course for my brilliant daughter, who both amazes and confounds me on a near-daily basis.  I am blessed to have had the smallest part in her upbringing (though I'm still not entirely sure who raised whom), and I can't wait to see what she does next.  I adore you all.

This Thanksgiving, however, I am especially grateful for my new sister Shan and for all she brings to my life: knowledge, openness, generosity, light, hope, love, joy, grace, history, a passel of talented and hilarious cousins who have welcomed me with open arms (and two of whom I once lived a mere 184 feet from without ever knowing it), a new brother-in-law nicknamed "Sweet Daddy," and a glorious trio of talented and heartwarming niece and nephews. Shannon is completion...I am at last whole because of her, and I love her unreservedly.

My heart is full.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Revelations, Part 2: Paternity

I love genealogy; it's history wrapped in mystery and tied up with the ribbon of revelation. (Meanwhile, is it just me, or does "The Ribbon of Revelation" sound like something St. John the Apostle would use to tie his tunic during one of his rare whimsical moments?)

Doing genealogy is a little like getting paid to stalk dead people; as a result, you never know going in quite what you'll find so the occasional drama is inevitable.  That's all well and good until the drama magically appears on your own family tree's proverbial doorstep and suddenly you are the one trying to figure out how to process it all.  But more on that in a moment.

Genealogy Dad Jokes

After Spring's riotous insanity, what with the death of my birth mother Norma, the girlie's graduation, and the replacement of both my car and my home's entire HVAC system/water heater (never mind the indecent expense of replacement), my hope was that the rest of the year would prove to be a little more chill. (Insert maniacal laughter here.)  Instead, most of June was spent recovering from the onslaught of May and starting to prep for moving the girlie south to start her doctoral program in Atlanta.  Aside from a few cringe-worthy moments involved in parking a 15' U-Haul truck and attached car trailer and car in an awkwardly-designed Taco Bell parking lot, the move went more or less smoothly and we got the girlie settled back in Georgia--just three years after our having left it.  Irony strikes again, the perverse bastage.

With the girlie safely ensconced in her new apartment, I was able to spend a couple days visiting dear friends in the area before attending my first-ever genealogy institute in Athens, Georgia, my former home.  The institute was a little intimidating at first, particularly since I was surrounded by much more experienced genealogists, but I had a great time and learned a lot about Scottish genealogy research (including the correct way to pronounce "Kirkcudbright"--it's Kuh-coo-bree, by the way) under the auspices of my instructor Paul Milner, whose encyclopedic knowledge and ready humor made the week-long class so enjoyable that I'll be taking a course on English genealogy from him in Salt Lake City next January. (For those of you who don't know, the Family History Library in Salt Lake City is basically Genealogy Mecca, so any chance to study in its vicinity is tantamount to going on pilgrimage.)

After the institute I returned home and was finally able to spend a month catching up on things before my next genealogy course started at the beginning of September.  Several of the institute attendees had warned me that the course I was planning to take was rather intensive; each advised me to double or even triple how many hours Boston U said I should allot for the course every week.  Intimidated, I made sure to clear my schedule of conflicts for the rest of the year so I would have sufficient time to adequately focus on the coursework and assignments. Famous last words.

Earlier in the year,  I was contacted by one of my DNA matches on Ancestry.  A man named Terry was looking for help in solving a family mystery regarding his mother-in-law's parentage and, given that I was a relatively close match to his wife, they hoped that I could help.  Unfortunately, since I didn't really know who my birth father was, there was little I could do to assist.  This didn't seem to matter to Terry, who was convinced his mother-in-law and I were half-sisters.  To be honest, I didn't really believe him. Everything he told me about my supposed father, including the man's age and his location in Texas, conflicted with the (admittedly) limited information I already had about my alleged birth father; Also, I had DNA matches in the family of the man I thought was my birth father, albeit rather distant ones.  Given the relatively close match to Terry's wife, it was clear that I was related to Terry's family--I just didn't know how.  Terry decided to test his mother-in-law in the hope of discovering more information and said he would get back to me after the results came in.

A couple of months later a new DNA match showed up on my Ancestry account; it turned out to be for Terry's mother-in-law Robin who was, as he'd predicted, a degree closer to me than his wife was.  I remained unconvinced that Robin was a half-sister or that we shared a birth father, in part because while Ancestry classified us as a "close match," it also offered multiple options for our relationship, including aunt/niece, cousin, grandparent, etc.  Plus I couldn't get past the DNA matches I shared with the family of the man I thought was my birth father. I sent Terry a message about the match at some point in the spring, but never heard back and the whole thing slipped my mind.

However, Irony has an unnatural love for me and likes to hug me tighter than my skivvies, so it wasn't about to let me off the hook that easily. A mere week into my highly-intensive genealogy course, Terry finally returned my call and we chatted for a bit. By then I'd been introduced to the wonders of GEDmatch, which is a free site genealogists use to analyze and compare raw DNA data.  On GEDmatch, there is an option for comparing the X-chromosome of two testers.  Because Robin and I clearly had different mothers, if Terry uploaded her raw data to GEDmatch, I could compare our X-chromosomes; without our mother's Xs to complicate matters, any full X-match we shared would have to have come from a shared father.  By the time Terry called me in September, I'd also learned a little more about how to read and interpret DNA matches in terms of centimorgans (cM), which is a distance measurement genetic genealogists use to determine the closeness of relationships between people.  Robin shares enough cM with me to make our possible relationship one of grandparent/grandchild (which wasn't plausible given the proximity of our ages), one of aunt/niece (which was plausible, if less common, given our age proximity), or one of half-siblings.  Hmmm.

Stand back...I'm gonna try SCIENCE!

I asked Terry to tell me again about the man he thought was Robin's (our) birth father while I took notes, then I asked if he would be willing to upload Robin's DNA to GEDmatch so I could confirm whether or not we were half-siblings via the X-match utility.  While I waited the several days for him to do so, I started researching this putative father, a man named Donald Tolin (who ironically shared the same first name as the man I had thus far presumed to be my birth father).  In the process of frenetically researching Donald Tolin around my coursework, I learned several sketchy things about him, many of which echoed the circumstances of my conception.  I started to wonder.  I also reread my adoption paperwork and noticed that I might have misinterpreted some of it; after looking at the records from a fresh perspective, I realized that New Donald might fit the profile listed in my adoption paperwork after all. Slowly but surely, I started coming around to the idea that this Donald Tolin of Texas (originally from Indianapolis) just might be my birth father after all.

A few days later, Terry got Robin's DNA uploaded to GEDmatch and I immediately ran the X-comparison.

We were a match.

Blue is the color of sisterhood.

Suddenly I had a half-sister. And a birth father. Who was a different Donald than the birth father I spent the last five years thinking I had.

I was stunned.  I was also struggling to keep up with my homework around all the unexpected and exciting revelations.  Turns out my colleagues at the summer genealogy institute weren't kidding about the amount of time this course demanded.  Still, I made it work for me as much as I could by using my new-found paternal family as the basis for my next assignment. Multi-tasking FTW!

A couple of days later, Robin and I chatted on the phone for the first time.  We didn't talk very long; Robin doesn't seem to be a very chatty sort of person, at least not on the phone.  Hopefully we can get to know each other better as time goes on. We texted a few times after that first call because Terry thought he'd found a mention of Donald Tolin's death, but hadn't been able to confirm it.

I didn't hear much from Robin or Terry after that, so I got back to work on my class and settled into a consistent routine of doing 8-10 hours a day and having no life while basically being  imprisoned in my office and virtually chained to my computer doing genealogy assignments.   I fit in research on the Tolin family whenever I could find a spare moment.  All genealogy, all the time.  I figured I would finish up my course and that would be the end of the story.

I could not have been more wrong.

Revelations, Part 2: Paternity

I love genealogy; it's history wrapped in mystery and tied up with the ribbon of revelation. (Meanwhile, is it just me, or does "The Ribbon of Revelation" sound like something St. John the Apostle would use to tie his tunic during one of his rare whimsical moments?)

Doing genealogy is a little like getting paid to stalk dead people; as a result, you never know going in quite what you'll find so the occasional drama is inevitable.  That's all well and good until the drama magically appears on your own family tree's proverbial doorstep and suddenly you are the one trying to figure out how to process it all.  But more on that in a moment.

Genealogy Dad Jokes

After Spring's riotous insanity, what with the death of my birth mother Norma, the girlie's graduation, and the replacement of both my car and my home's entire HVAC system/water heater (never mind the indecent expense of replacement), my hope was that the rest of the year would prove to be a little more chill. (Insert maniacal laughter here.)  Instead, most of June was spent recovering from the onslaught of May and starting to prep for moving the girlie south to start her doctoral program in Atlanta.  Aside from a few cringe-worthy moments involved in parking a 15' U-Haul truck and attached car trailer and car in an awkwardly-designed Taco Bell parking lot, the move went more or less smoothly and we got the girlie settled back in Georgia--just three years after our having left it.  Irony strikes again, the perverse bastage.

With the girlie safely ensconced in her new apartment, I was able to spend a couple days visiting dear friends in the area before attending my first-ever genealogy institute in Athens, Georgia, my former home.  The institute was a little intimidating at first, particularly since I was surrounded by much more experienced genealogists, but I had a great time and learned a lot about Scottish genealogy research (including the correct way to pronounce "Kirkcudbright"--it's Kuh-coo-bree, by the way) under the auspices of my instructor Paul Milner, whose encyclopedic knowledge and ready humor made the week-long class so enjoyable that I'll be taking a course on English genealogy from him in Salt Lake City next January. (For those of you who don't know, the Family History Library in Salt Lake City is basically Genealogy Mecca, so any chance to study in its vicinity is tantamount to going on pilgrimage.)

After the institute I returned home and was finally able to spend a month catching up on things before my next genealogy course started at the beginning of September.  Several of the institute attendees had warned me that the course I was planning to take was rather intensive; each advised me to double or even triple how many hours Boston U said I should allot for the course every week.  Intimidated, I made sure to clear my schedule of conflicts for the rest of the year so I would have sufficient time to adequately focus on the coursework and assignments. Famous last words.

Earlier in the year,  I was contacted by one of my DNA matches on Ancestry.  A man named Terry was looking for help in solving a family mystery regarding his mother-in-law's parentage and, given that I was a relatively close match to his wife, they hoped that I could help.  Unfortunately, since I didn't really know who my birth father was, there was little I could do to assist.  This didn't seem to matter to Terry, who was convinced his mother-in-law and I were half-sisters.  To be honest, I didn't really believe him. Everything he told me about my supposed father, including the man's age and his location in Texas, conflicted with the (admittedly) limited information I already had about my alleged birth father; Also, I had DNA matches in the family of the man I thought was my birth father, albeit rather distant ones.  Given the relatively close match to Terry's wife, it was clear that I was related to Terry's family--I just didn't know how.  Terry decided to test his mother-in-law in the hope of discovering more information and said he would get back to me after the results came in.

A couple of months later a new DNA match showed up on my Ancestry account; it turned out to be for Terry's mother-in-law Robin who was, as he'd predicted, a degree closer to me than his wife was.  I remained unconvinced that Robin was a half-sister or that we shared a birth father, in part because while Ancestry classified us as a "close match," it also offered multiple options for our relationship, including aunt/niece, cousin, grandparent, etc.  Plus I couldn't get past the DNA matches I shared with the family of the man I thought was my birth father. I sent Terry a message about the match at some point in the spring, but never heard back and the whole thing slipped my mind.

However, Irony has an unnatural love for me and likes to hug me tighter than my skivvies, so it wasn't about to let me off the hook that easily. A mere week into my highly-intensive genealogy course, Terry finally returned my call and we chatted for a bit. By then I'd been introduced to the wonders of GEDmatch, which is a free site genealogists use to analyze and compare raw DNA data.  On GEDmatch, there is an option for comparing the X-chromosome of two testers.  Because Robin and I clearly had different mothers, if Terry uploaded her raw data to GEDmatch, I could compare our X-chromosomes; without our mother's Xs to complicate matters, any full X-match we shared would have to have come from a shared father.  By the time Terry called me in September, I'd also learned a little more about how to read and interpret DNA matches in terms of centimorgans (cM), which is a distance measurement genetic genealogists use to determine the closeness of relationships between people.  Robin shares enough cM with me to make our possible relationship one of grandparent/grandchild (which wasn't plausible given the proximity of our ages), one of aunt/niece (which was plausible, if less common, given our age proximity), or one of half-siblings.  Hmmm.

Stand back...I'm gonna try SCIENCE!

I asked Terry to tell me again about the man he thought was Robin's (our) birth father while I took notes, then I asked if he would be willing to upload Robin's DNA to GEDmatch so I could confirm whether or not we were half-siblings via the X-match utility.  While I waited the several days for him to do so, I started researching this putative father, a man named Donald Tolin (who ironically shared the same first name as the man I had thus far presumed to be my birth father).  In the process of frenetically researching Donald Tolin around my coursework, I learned several sketchy things about him, many of which echoed the circumstances of my conception.  I started to wonder.  I also reread my adoption paperwork and noticed that I might have misinterpreted some of it; after looking at the records from a fresh perspective, I realized that New Donald might fit the profile listed in my adoption paperwork after all. Slowly but surely, I started coming around to the idea that this Donald Tolin of Texas (originally from Indianapolis) just might be my birth father after all.

A few days later, Terry got Robin's DNA uploaded to GEDmatch and I immediately ran the X-comparison.

We were a match.

Blue is the color of sisterhood.

Suddenly I had a half-sister. And a birth father. Who was a different Donald than the birth father I spent the last five years thinking I had.

I was stunned.  I was also struggling to keep up with my homework around all the unexpected and exciting revelations.  Turns out my colleagues at the summer genealogy institute weren't kidding about the amount of time this course demanded.  Still, I made it work for me as much as I could by using my new-found paternal family as the basis for my next assignment. Multi-tasking FTW!

A couple of days later, Robin and I chatted on the phone for the first time.  We didn't talk very long; Robin doesn't seem to be a very chatty sort of person, at least not on the phone.  Hopefully we can get to know each other better as time goes on. We texted a few times after that first call because Terry thought he'd found a mention of Donald Tolin's death, but hadn't been able to confirm it.

I didn't hear much from Robin or Terry after that, so I got back to work on my class and settled into a consistent routine of doing 8-10 hours a day and having no life while basically being  imprisoned in my office and virtually chained to my computer doing genealogy assignments.   I fit in research on the Tolin family whenever I could find a spare moment.  All genealogy, all the time.  I figured I would finish up my course and that would be the end of the story.

I could not have been more wrong.

Revelations, Part 1: Saying Goodbye

If I were emulating the coy style of Lin-Manuel Miranda, I might call 2017 #abitofayear.

However, for me to assert that 2017 has been "a bit of a year" would be a gross understatement, even by Miranda's standards. Between not finding much particularly humorous after the election and the ensuing rapid-fire of events blasting me in the face like a runaway fire hose, I've barely had time to remember my own name much less to write or to finish any projects.

What began earlier this year as a new dedication to my ever-increasing passion for genealogy--via an online "Genealogy Essentials" class in February through Boston University--has now turned into a wildly improbable journey of discovery, one that is rife with endless ironies (as all my best adventures are).

The Essentials course only served to whet my appetite, so I decided to take the serious graduate-level course "Certificate Program in Genealogical Research," which builds on the Essentials course by increasing one's professionalism and research skills in the field while helping to prepare one for future certification as a genealogist.  However, with the girlie finishing up seminary in May and moving to Atlanta over the summer, I opted to wait on the second course till September when things would presumably be a little calmer.  It's cute how I thought that.

Sometime during my first genealogy course the girlie was on her way to NY for a meeting and ended up slipping on some ice and putting her car in a ditch.  She was fine; the car not so much.  We rescued her from the cold, white north, then had to replace her car after much wrangling with the snail-like pace of the insurance company.  By the time March ended, my first course was over and the girlie was firmly ensconced in a cute little red Hyundai.  On the plus side, I now get to look forward to having extra pocket change every month when she mails me her car payment.

May was beyond insane.  First, my car started dying, so I had to work on replacing yet another vehicle.  Then my upstairs air conditioner decided to die, ultimately taking out the entire HVAC system and water boiler with it.  I can only assume that they went on strike in solidarity with the first unit, and not at all because they were each passing 20 years old and knew that all warranties were defunct, making it easier to screw with me.  Meanwhile, I still had all the requisite end-of-the-year concerts and the girlie's graduation on my plate. And, just because all that wasn't exciting enough, I got a call from my maternal uncle--ON MOTHER'S DAY (hello, Irony, I was starting to worry you weren't paying attention) that my birth mother Norma was critically ill and not expected to live long.

May turned into what amounted to a military operation of surgical strike precision in order for me to fly to Indianapolis to be with Norma before (and when) she died, to manage the intricate ballet of HVAC people coming and going in and out of my house on and off for three weeks, to coordinate graduation choir rehearsals and actual graduation, to acquire a functional vehicle for me, and to fly back to Indy for Norma's funeral.  Honestly, I'm still not entirely sure how I accomplished it all; the month is largely a blur and I still feel bad that I wasn't able to devote as much time and attention to each individual event as I might have liked.

Picture of Norma at 40-ish, gifted to me by my uncle.
(Photo Credit: Mark Wheeler)

Norma's funeral was definitely a unique experience, given that my status as a pretty much "life-long secret" was blown wide open virtually within minutes of Norma's death and without regard to my opinions on the matter. I found this particularly disconcerting; I figured that as the "secret" in question, Norma's moratorium on divulging said secret would then pass onto me and it would then be my right to decide when and how the revelation of my existence might be disseminated.  Alas, this did not turn out to be the case. Instead, the revelation became a juggernaut over which I had no control or say and I could only hold on for dear life and ride it out, much to my chagrin.  At the funeral, I could almost literally feel holes burning into my back from the piercing gazes of some of Norma's friends and associates; I was never quite clear whether it was because they were judging me (us) or just because they were burning with curiosity, which seemed more the case with some of Norma's relatives. To their credit, most of these relatives gamely introduced themselves to me and were reasonably welcoming, especially considering the news of my existence had to have come as a quite a shock.  For good or for ill, I was the skeleton now firmly out of the closet.

My primary concern about the entire juggernaut was that my presence might end up pulling focus from Norma and keep people from celebrating her life or from recognizing her passing with all the respect she deserved. I really didn't want her funeral to become about me; that would have been grossly inappropriate as far as I was concerned, and not even remotely the reason I was there.

All in all, things went somewhat better than I feared; for the most part, any people who were judgmental kept it to themselves, and the people who did speak to me were polite enough.  Doesn't mean I couldn't still feel the majority of them staring at me the entire service.  The rabid curiosity of everyone scoping me out was physically tangible.

When it was over, I was grateful that Norma could finally be at peace after an often difficult life. She was a quiet person, a private person, but she was loving and kind and generous.  She spent most of her nursing career helping to deliver babies at the same hospital in which I was born, always working the night shift like the night owl she was. I confess it was a little surreal being there in that hospital with her as she died and realizing that the last time I was there, it was also with Norma--when I was being born.  Talk about coming full circle.

There were many ups and downs in May, and many revelations about Norma's life and family (myself being perhaps the biggest one), some of which were good and some of which weren't...as revelations so often are.  But I got to meet some of my new-found cousins, one of whom is a live wire full of energy and and Life with a capital "L." And because Irony follows me like a shadow, it turns out that she was also an adoptee. Also, one of Norma's cousins is a redhead who shares my name and who has a daughter with the same name as the girlie.  There were many other weird little serendipities between us, proving yet again that genetics influences us and our choices in invisible ways we could never imagine.

Surprisingly, the revelations surrounding Norma's passing proved but a hint of what the rest of 2017 had in store for me.  If I'd only known in January where this year was going to lead, I could have purchased a case of Valium and some baseball catcher pads with which to prepare myself for the onslaught.

For more of the story, continue reading parts 2 and 3 of the Revelations trilogy.

Revelations, Part 1: Saying Goodbye

If I were emulating the coy style of Lin-Manuel Miranda, I might call 2017 #abitofayear.

However, for me to assert that 2017 has been "a bit of a year" would be a gross understatement, even by Miranda's standards. Between not finding much particularly humorous after the election and the ensuing rapid-fire of events blasting me in the face like a runaway fire hose, I've barely had time to remember my own name much less to write or to finish any projects.

What began earlier this year as a new dedication to my ever-increasing passion for genealogy--via an online "Genealogy Essentials" class in February through Boston University--has now turned into a wildly improbable journey of discovery, one that is rife with endless ironies (as all my best adventures are).

The Essentials course only served to whet my appetite, so I decided to take the serious graduate-level course "Certificate Program in Genealogical Research," which builds on the Essentials course by increasing one's professionalism and research skills in the field while helping to prepare one for future certification as a genealogist.  However, with the girlie finishing up seminary in May and moving to Atlanta over the summer, I opted to wait on the second course till September when things would presumably be a little calmer.  It's cute how I thought that.

Sometime during my first genealogy course the girlie was on her way to NY for a meeting and ended up slipping on some ice and putting her car in a ditch.  She was fine; the car not so much.  We rescued her from the cold, white north, then had to replace her car after much wrangling with the snail-like pace of the insurance company.  By the time March ended, my first course was over and the girlie was firmly ensconced in a cute little red Hyundai.  On the plus side, I now get to look forward to having extra pocket change every month when she mails me her car payment.

May was beyond insane.  First, my car started dying, so I had to work on replacing yet another vehicle.  Then my upstairs air conditioner decided to die, ultimately taking out the entire HVAC system and water boiler with it.  I can only assume that they went on strike in solidarity with the first unit, and not at all because they were each passing 20 years old and knew that all warranties were defunct, making it easier to screw with me.  Meanwhile, I still had all the requisite end-of-the-year concerts and the girlie's graduation on my plate. And, just because all that wasn't exciting enough, I got a call from my maternal uncle--ON MOTHER'S DAY (hello, Irony, I was starting to worry you weren't paying attention) that my birth mother Norma was critically ill and not expected to live long.

May turned into what amounted to a military operation of surgical strike precision in order for me to fly to Indianapolis to be with Norma before (and when) she died, to manage the intricate ballet of HVAC people coming and going in and out of my house on and off for three weeks, to coordinate graduation choir rehearsals and actual graduation, to acquire a functional vehicle for me, and to fly back to Indy for Norma's funeral.  Honestly, I'm still not entirely sure how I accomplished it all; the month is largely a blur and I still feel bad that I wasn't able to devote as much time and attention to each individual event as I might have liked.

Picture of Norma at 40-ish, gifted to me by my uncle.
(Photo Credit: Mark Wheeler)

Norma's funeral was definitely a unique experience, given that my status as a pretty much "life-long secret" was blown wide open virtually within minutes of Norma's death and without regard to my opinions on the matter. I found this particularly disconcerting; I figured that as the "secret" in question, Norma's moratorium on divulging said secret would then pass onto me and it would then be my right to decide when and how the revelation of my existence might be disseminated.  Alas, this did not turn out to be the case. Instead, the revelation became a juggernaut over which I had no control or say and I could only hold on for dear life and ride it out, much to my chagrin.  At the funeral, I could almost literally feel holes burning into my back from the piercing gazes of some of Norma's friends and associates; I was never quite clear whether it was because they were judging me (us) or just because they were burning with curiosity, which seemed more the case with some of Norma's relatives. To their credit, most of these relatives gamely introduced themselves to me and were reasonably welcoming, especially considering the news of my existence had to have come as a quite a shock.  For good or for ill, I was the skeleton now firmly out of the closet.

My primary concern about the entire juggernaut was that my presence might end up pulling focus from Norma and keep people from celebrating her life or from recognizing her passing with all the respect she deserved. I really didn't want her funeral to become about me; that would have been grossly inappropriate as far as I was concerned, and not even remotely the reason I was there.

All in all, things went somewhat better than I feared; for the most part, any people who were judgmental kept it to themselves, and the people who did speak to me were polite enough.  Doesn't mean I couldn't still feel the majority of them staring at me the entire service.  The rabid curiosity of everyone scoping me out was physically tangible.

When it was over, I was grateful that Norma could finally be at peace after an often difficult life. She was a quiet person, a private person, but she was loving and kind and generous.  She spent most of her nursing career helping to deliver babies at the same hospital in which I was born, always working the night shift like the night owl she was. I confess it was a little surreal being there in that hospital with her as she died and realizing that the last time I was there, it was also with Norma--when I was being born.  Talk about coming full circle.

There were many ups and downs in May, and many revelations about Norma's life and family (myself being perhaps the biggest one), some of which were good and some of which weren't...as revelations so often are.  But I got to meet some of my new-found cousins, one of whom is a live wire full of energy and and Life with a capital "L." And because Irony follows me like a shadow, it turns out that she was also an adoptee. Also, one of Norma's cousins is a redhead who shares my name and who has a daughter with the same name as the girlie.  There were many other weird little serendipities between us, proving yet again that genetics influences us and our choices in invisible ways we could never imagine.

Surprisingly, the revelations surrounding Norma's passing proved but a hint of what the rest of 2017 had in store for me.  If I'd only known in January where this year was going to lead, I could have purchased a case of Valium and some baseball catcher pads with which to prepare myself for the onslaught.

For more of the story, continue reading parts 2 and 3 of the Revelations trilogy.

Who Do You Think You Are? - The Genetic Journey

Lately I've been watching a show on TLC called "Who Do You Think You Are?"  Largely sponsored by Ancestry.com, it follows various celebrities around as they trace bits of their family history.  Given my own history (and frequent lack thereof), I find this show fascinating.

On the one hand, I'm wildly envious of the stars' seemingly endless resources in hiring professional genealogists and researchers and historians to trace their lineage as they travel all over the world to discover where they came from.  Have to jet off to Europe or the Carribbean?  Oh, darn.  On the other hand, I love how much genealogical searching humanizes these celebrities; their reactions, whether of surprise or excitement or distress, appear genuine because in those moments they are just like the rest of us--regular people searching for who they are and where they came from.  And that's something we all want and deserve to know.

So far this season I've seen celebrities who've discovered they are direct descendants of European royalty and I've watched as other celebrities learned that distant relatives were murderers (though in one case it was arguably self-defense).  The common themes seem to be either how various family members persevered against great odds or how some aspect of one's personality carried down through the centuries.  For example, Jim Parsons of Big Bang Theory wanted to see if there were any creative people or artists in his line; apparently there were several.  Another actor, for whom family is paramount, discovered a long line of ancestors who routinely sacrificed for their families.  Just the other night I watched as Brooke Shields learned that her Italian lineage actually originated in France; turns out she majored in French Literature in college and has always been drawn to all things French without ever really knowing why.  Now she does.

Obviously this is a television show and is therefore edited for maximum effect, particularly in presenting the whole "rise above adversity" theme.  After all, the goal is to snag viewers.  Even so, I am drawn to the latter theme of continuity because I get it--I'm seeing it over and over again as I trace my own ancestry.  I find the idea of continuity in one's family extremely compelling, especially after growing up as an adoptee and having pretty much zero continuity or family history for more than four decades.  Certainly a great deal of who I am was instilled by my adoptive family and I'm grateful for that and for them, but those experiences only define a portion of what and who I am.  Perhaps that's why the recent search for my birth parents and my history has been so valuable to me because I am finally getting a glimpse of my unknown origins.  Some aspects of my ancestry, particularly on my birth father's side, will likely remain a mystery forever.  I wish it could be otherwise, regardless of my birth father's apparent lack of character, because his own ancestry still comprises half of my heredity and I'd still like to learn more about it...I want to see if there is a continuity present in his line as there is on my birth mother's side.

The Love of a Birthmother by Susan Scharpf

Even if I never learn anything more about my birth father, the information I've learned thus far about my birth mother's family has been a gift.  It's difficult to describe how meaningful an experience it is to be able to find a part of yourself that you didn't even know was missing...to hear the echoes of relatives long past calling down to you through the ages...to feel just that little bit more whole.  It's an amazing thing, this context, and I've watched it play out over and over in each episode of this show just as I'm now watching it play out in my own life on a much smaller scale.

It's these stories, these connections, that make everything so real for me.  Seeing names on a page is interesting and all, but when those names come to life and become real, breathing people with whom you might share commonalities?  Well, that's another matter entirely, and one which cannot be underestimated.  I've already written about some of the small commonalities I share with my birth mother, the odd idiosyncrasies that mark me as one of her line and no one else's.  Since then, I've learned a little more about her our family, even with my limited resources.  I'm starting to hear the echoes.  I have one great-grand-aunt who did medical research at a time when women were not generally that highly educated; she helped to isolate the typhus bacterium.  Her sister, another great-grand-aunt, was a musician who taught piano in Germany.  I gather my grandmother was also a pianist.  I know virtually nothing about these people, and yet I can still see glimpses of where my interests in education and music might have originated.  My great-great-grandfather himself founded a well-known mission in Indianapolis which is still in operation today.  I find it particularly ironic that it was originally founded as a home for unwed mothers (and initially called the Door of Hope) given the circumstances of my own conception and birth.  I can't help but wonder if that example might not have somehow influenced my birth mother's decision to put me up for adoption as opposed to aborting me.  If so, then I'm doubly thankful.  Regardless, the echoes are still there--I may not have done anything as big as founding a mission, but I have always liked helping people however I can.

Watching this show serves to remind me how we are all tied to our past whether we realize it or not, as well as whether we are trying to improve upon it or to merely live up to it.  Either way, we are still a product of all those who came before.  For me, this is much like the strange feeling I had a few years ago when I was in the UK.  We spent some time exploring London, though we missed many of the sites I would have liked to see such as Glastonbury, Bath, and Stratford-upon-Avon.  There were various complications along the way that made the trip less than it might have been, but when I got on the train to head to Scotland, all the frustrations melted away.  It felt for all the world like I was going home.  The closer I got to Scotland, the more relaxed I became--the more at peace--as if centuries of Gaelic ancestors were welcoming me back to my native land.  It was a surreal experience, particularly since I had no knowledge of my heredity at the time.

Since then I've discovered through DNA testing that most of my ancestors originated in the UK (with a few Swiss and Germans thrown in for seasoning). Apparently Ancestry.com (which provided the testing) filtered their findings more fully because one day I received an email with updated results showing that I am approximately 31% Irish (yeah, like that's a shocker) and 27% British.  I'm even 10% Scandinavian...yay, Vikings!  Research into my birth mother's family suggests that of that UK percentage, a significant portion is Welsh and yes, there are a a few Scots scattered here and there.  So far I've not found any Irish in my birth mother's lineage to speak of (though I'm not done researching), so I can only assume I inherited the majority of it from my birth father.  Either way, I now have a context for my life-long fascination with all things Celtic (and not just their kilts, though admittedly those are pretty fabulous and tend to make me a little weak in the knees).  I've always been intrigued with the history and mythology of the Celtic nations and drawn to Celtic art, particularly knotwork.  I never knew why before--now I do.  Besides, if I'm part Welsh, I can totally claim a legitimate connection to King Arthur and to Torchwood (and possibly Doctor Who by extension).  Bright side, people...bright side.

Learning about oneself and one's geneaology is a journey in every sense of the word.  Most people get to discover their history over decades; my journey has so far been compressed into two short years, making it arguably more impactful since I didn't have the luxury of living and breathing my genetic family history as I grew up.  Suddenly I have a context for things I didn't previously understand; suddenly I can see the beginnings of a continuity connecting me throughout the years.  Suddenly I understand why my time in Scotland felt so natural and grounding, like Scotland was calling me home.

It was.

Who Do You Think You Are? - The Genetic Journey

Lately I've been watching a show on TLC called "Who Do You Think You Are?"  Largely sponsored by Ancestry.com, it follows various celebrities around as they trace bits of their family history.  Given my own history (and frequent lack thereof), I find this show fascinating.

On the one hand, I'm wildly envious of the stars' seemingly endless resources in hiring professional genealogists and researchers and historians to trace their lineage as they travel all over the world to discover where they came from.  Have to jet off to Europe or the Carribbean?  Oh, darn.  On the other hand, I love how much genealogical searching humanizes these celebrities; their reactions, whether of surprise or excitement or distress, appear genuine because in those moments they are just like the rest of us--regular people searching for who they are and where they came from.  And that's something we all want and deserve to know.

So far this season I've seen celebrities who've discovered they are direct descendants of European royalty and I've watched as other celebrities learned that distant relatives were murderers (though in one case it was arguably self-defense).  The common themes seem to be either how various family members persevered against great odds or how some aspect of one's personality carried down through the centuries.  For example, Jim Parsons of Big Bang Theory wanted to see if there were any creative people or artists in his line; apparently there were several.  Another actor, for whom family is paramount, discovered a long line of ancestors who routinely sacrificed for their families.  Just the other night I watched as Brooke Shields learned that her Italian lineage actually originated in France; turns out she majored in French Literature in college and has always been drawn to all things French without ever really knowing why.  Now she does.

Obviously this is a television show and is therefore edited for maximum effect, particularly in presenting the whole "rise above adversity" theme.  After all, the goal is to snag viewers.  Even so, I am drawn to the latter theme of continuity because I get it--I'm seeing it over and over again as I trace my own ancestry.  I find the idea of continuity in one's family extremely compelling, especially after growing up as an adoptee and having pretty much zero continuity or family history for more than four decades.  Certainly a great deal of who I am was instilled by my adoptive family and I'm grateful for that and for them, but those experiences only define a portion of what and who I am.  Perhaps that's why the recent search for my birth parents and my history has been so valuable to me because I am finally getting a glimpse of my unknown origins.  Some aspects of my ancestry, particularly on my birth father's side, will likely remain a mystery forever.  I wish it could be otherwise, regardless of my birth father's apparent lack of character, because his own ancestry still comprises half of my heredity and I'd still like to learn more about it...I want to see if there is a continuity present in his line as there is on my birth mother's side.

The Love of a Birthmother by Susan Scharpf

Even if I never learn anything more about my birth father, the information I've learned thus far about my birth mother's family has been a gift.  It's difficult to describe how meaningful an experience it is to be able to find a part of yourself that you didn't even know was missing...to hear the echoes of relatives long past calling down to you through the ages...to feel just that little bit more whole.  It's an amazing thing, this context, and I've watched it play out over and over in each episode of this show just as I'm now watching it play out in my own life on a much smaller scale.

It's these stories, these connections, that make everything so real for me.  Seeing names on a page is interesting and all, but when those names come to life and become real, breathing people with whom you might share commonalities?  Well, that's another matter entirely, and one which cannot be underestimated.  I've already written about some of the small commonalities I share with my birth mother, the odd idiosyncrasies that mark me as one of her line and no one else's.  Since then, I've learned a little more about her our family, even with my limited resources.  I'm starting to hear the echoes.  I have one great-grand-aunt who did medical research at a time when women were not generally that highly educated; she helped to isolate the typhus bacterium.  Her sister, another great-grand-aunt, was a musician who taught piano in Germany.  I gather my grandmother was also a pianist.  I know virtually nothing about these people, and yet I can still see glimpses of where my interests in education and music might have originated.  My great-great-grandfather himself founded a well-known mission in Indianapolis which is still in operation today.  I find it particularly ironic that it was originally founded as a home for unwed mothers (and initially called the Door of Hope) given the circumstances of my own conception and birth.  I can't help but wonder if that example might not have somehow influenced my birth mother's decision to put me up for adoption as opposed to aborting me.  If so, then I'm doubly thankful.  Regardless, the echoes are still there--I may not have done anything as big as founding a mission, but I have always liked helping people however I can.

Watching this show serves to remind me how we are all tied to our past whether we realize it or not, as well as whether we are trying to improve upon it or to merely live up to it.  Either way, we are still a product of all those who came before.  For me, this is much like the strange feeling I had a few years ago when I was in the UK.  We spent some time exploring London, though we missed many of the sites I would have liked to see such as Glastonbury, Bath, and Stratford-upon-Avon.  There were various complications along the way that made the trip less than it might have been, but when I got on the train to head to Scotland, all the frustrations melted away.  It felt for all the world like I was going home.  The closer I got to Scotland, the more relaxed I became--the more at peace--as if centuries of Gaelic ancestors were welcoming me back to my native land.  It was a surreal experience, particularly since I had no knowledge of my heredity at the time.

Since then I've discovered through DNA testing that most of my ancestors originated in the UK (with a few Swiss and Germans thrown in for seasoning). Apparently Ancestry.com (which provided the testing) filtered their findings more fully because one day I received an email with updated results showing that I am approximately 31% Irish (yeah, like that's a shocker) and 27% British.  I'm even 10% Scandinavian...yay, Vikings!  Research into my birth mother's family suggests that of that UK percentage, a significant portion is Welsh and yes, there are a a few Scots scattered here and there.  So far I've not found any Irish in my birth mother's lineage to speak of (though I'm not done researching), so I can only assume I inherited the majority of it from my birth father.  Either way, I now have a context for my life-long fascination with all things Celtic (and not just their kilts, though admittedly those are pretty fabulous and tend to make me a little weak in the knees).  I've always been intrigued with the history and mythology of the Celtic nations and drawn to Celtic art, particularly knotwork.  I never knew why before--now I do.  Besides, if I'm part Welsh, I can totally claim a legitimate connection to King Arthur and to Torchwood (and possibly Doctor Who by extension).  Bright side, people...bright side.

Learning about oneself and one's geneaology is a journey in every sense of the word.  Most people get to discover their history over decades; my journey has so far been compressed into two short years, making it arguably more impactful since I didn't have the luxury of living and breathing my genetic family history as I grew up.  Suddenly I have a context for things I didn't previously understand; suddenly I can see the beginnings of a continuity connecting me throughout the years.  Suddenly I understand why my time in Scotland felt so natural and grounding, like Scotland was calling me home.

It was.

Ancestry and Adoption

In February of this year, Ancestry.com was featuring a 2-week trial to encourage people to get hooked try out their services.  After thinking about it, I decided "what the heck" and signed up to give it a whirl, figuring I could always cancel two weeks later.  After all, two weeks should be plenty of time to suss out a family ancestry, right?   I spent probably 3 days straight staying up till 4 am filling in little links in my husband's and daughter's family trees.  I stayed up late several other nights as well, though perhaps not quite till the wee hours.  A week and a half in, I looked at B and told him point-blank that we would be needing to continue the membership because there was absolutely no way that I would ever be done in time because his family never ended.

Eight months or so later, I'm still not done.  Granted, I haven't exactly been working around the clock on it because my in-laws' line goes on freaking forever--and that's just on the one thread I've followed through so far.  Heaven only knows where the other threads will lead once I've sifted through them all and clicked on every little green leaf waving wildly at me with yet another "ancestry hint."  The damn things are like kudzu; just when you think you've knocked them all out you find them swarming somewhere else.

"Ku-ku-KUDZU!"
"Gesundheit."

So far it's been an interesting journey; turns out my lovely girlie and my spouse are related to any number of European royalty (assuming of course that Ancestry.com is at all accurate), including but not limited to several Plantagenets (including the king who signed the Magna Carta), Robert the Bruce--High King of Scotland, Brian Boru--High King of Ireland, Llewellyn the Great of Wales, William the Conquerer, Eleanor of Aquitaine (think "Lion in Winter"), not to mention assorted other nobles and a few Crusaders as well.  That's the funny thing about genealogy; once you get far enough to connect with one royal, suddenly you're connected with metric crap-ton of royals because they were forever intermingling families for political reasons.  Also--bonus--there is a heck of a lot more recorded information about them.

My grandmother-in-law was big into genealogy and spent years tracing her husband's (B's grandfather's) family history long before the magic Google and interwebs came into being.  She even journeyed to England to look at old records and eventually wrote a book of family history going back several generations.  This record has proved invaluable in my own research efforts.  For example, she insisted that there was a family story that Bonnie Prince Charlie was, in fact, one of her husband's relatives.  The problem was that she could never find any proof.  Years ago I looked into it, but it never seemed entirely plausible because the timelines didn't jive.  There was essentially a generation off between where she'd traced back and where Charlie's line came forward, making it extremely unlikely that the family is directly descended from him (never mind the fact that he was far too busy begetting illegitimate children while in exile in Rome to be taking ship to Virginia where the hubby's relatives first came over).

Interestingly enough, I solved this mystery just the other night, some 20 plus years after I'd first heard the legend.  Turns out there was a relevant Charles in the family tree, just not that Charlie.  Still, good old Chuck was fairly important after all, because he largely bridges that generation gap between documented family history and royal descendents rather nicely.  Good to know that my husband is apparently the 20 gabillionth in line to the throne of England.  (I'd better start packing my pointy hats...)

Pointy Hat of Scotland

This history is fascinating and exciting and intriguing and even a little depressing, at least for me.  When I start with the girlie on the family tree, I can see her dad's name and his family line shooting off across the room on a genetic rocket and back into the middle ages.  It's impressive, really.  Meanwhile, I look down at my name on her tree and see the great, white nothingness that follows it because I was adopted when I was only five weeks old (yay, me!).  I've never had any complaints about being adopted; I always figured I probably came out ahead in the bargain and could only imagine how torturous the decision to give me up must have been for my birth mom even if she was a knocked-up college student as seems to have been the case.   Because I knew I was adopted before I was old enough to really comprehend what that meant, I didn't grow up with any random identity crises or anything like some kids do.  Sure, I sometimes wondered where my various attributes originated--like who in my family had blue eyes or red hair or liked to draw or sing or read.  I also wondered what my ethnicity was, though given my pale complexion it was easy enough to rule out most countries.  But that still didn't stop me from making up nationalities as the mood suited me.  Sometimes I was Irish (hello, red hair and freckles!) if for no other reason than that I was born on St. Patrick's Day.  Sometimes I was French, because I liked the language and because "LaRue" is French.  Being French somehow seemed exotic, at least until some kids at school asked one day what "LaRue" meant.  When I told them it was French for "the street," my darling classmates promptly decided what I'd actually said was "the streak."  Lovely.  I was "Mary the Streak(er)" for the rest of that year.  Kids.  Sigh.

For the most part, though, I never really thought much about finding my birth family.  As far as I was concerned, I already had a family so I didn't seem to be missing anything, nor did I have any great desire to upend either my life or that of my birth parents.  Besides, it's hard to miss what you've never known, and I'm pretty used to the anonymity of my past.  When my girlie was born, I thought more about digging into my past because  a family medical history suddenly seemed infinitely more relevant.  It was one thing for doctors to scrawl "ADOPTED" and slash lines through the family medical history section in all my medical charts, but I didn't want them doing that to my daughter.  Unfortunately, all I could ever uncover was "non-identifying" information, most of which I already knew from the records my mom gave me when I was in my 30s.  These records helped me fill in a very few blanks, such as the height and hair/eye color of my birth mother and "putative" father (it feels so special to know someone was "alleged" to have sired you...as though your existence were somehow a crime).  Because Indiana law does not allow for open adoption records at the time of my birth and because I wasn't in a position to hire someone to pry open the records back then, I filed the new bits of information away and went on about my life in relative peace, at least till I had to keep staring at that giant abyss of blankness behind my name on Ancestry.com while hearing the voice of Duncan MacLeod (of the Clan MacLeod) on a loop as he repeatedly demanded of his adoptive father "Where do I come from?  WHERE DO I COME FROM????" from one of the Highlander episodes.

Who cares where you come from, so long as you come over here.

Perhaps part of my renewed interest is because my adoptive mom passed away in April and I am now (sort of) orphaned.  Suddenly I find myself wanting to know more about who I am and, like the hot Scot above, where I come from.  Everyone deserves to know who they are and what their history is.  Not only do I want to fill in the pieces and thus satisfy my own curiosity, I also the information for my girlie who likewise has a right to know the half of her history she's missing.  So recently, when Ancestry.com started offering limited invitations to DNA testing, I jumped at the chance.  I realized that for a paltrey $100 their testing is not likely to be as thorough or complete as I might like, nor exactly was it gonna turn me into the next Alex Haley.  And that's okay.  But I figured any information about me at this point is far better than the none I currently have.

Eventually the test packet arrived; instead of being provided with cotton swabs with which to scrape my cheek, I was given the dubious pleasure of hocking up a nice juicy loogey into a little plastic test tube, after which I was required to dump in a stabilizing agent, seal it in the provided envelope, and send it off.  Once I'd closed the package I started to get paranoid because I realized belatedly that I wasn't supposed to eat or drink anything for 30 minutes before performing my spit-take, which was suspiciously tinged pink.  Hello, Crystal Light!  I feared that I'd screwed up the test and that the scientists over at Spit Genes backward R Us would be sitting around wondering why I'd felt the need to bleed fruit punch into my sample and would ultimately charge me for another one.  Whoops.

Afterwards, I checked the Ancestry.com site every couple of weeks to see if any results had been posted, which they never were.  Watched pot, and all.  I was supposed to get an email when they were ready, which I also never received.  Then one day I happened to be playing around with the family trees and I happened to look over at the testing section on a whim. I was stunned to see their little pie chart all colored in and with percentage numbers emblazoned on the page, informing me that 60% of my DNA was genetically tied to the British Isles and 34% to Northern Europe.  Probably not surprisingly, there was also listed a  6% of "unknown."  Heh.  As if I needed confirmation that I've always been an "unknown quantity."

Is it just me or does that pie chart look a little like a blue Pokemon?

On the one hand, this information is not in the least surprising.  As I've already mentioned, my physical appearance fairly screams Irish or Scottish, and I've had several people over the years comment that my coloring and build also resembles someone from Northern Germany.  Maybe Boris Becker is my long-lost cousin.  So yeah, DNA peeps, good call on those percentages.  On the other hand, even though this information was not exactly earth-shattering news, I was still not prepared at all for the wave of emotions which hit me the moment I saw those results.  It's one thing to make up crap over the years about where you're from, but another thing entirely to have it confirmed in reality.  And it's yet another thing to see the names and faces of people who are genetically tied to you.  I have 4th and fifth and sixth cousins--blood relatives.  Who knew?  Obviously I knew I had relatives somewhere, but before it was always too abstract to take seriously.  Now it's real, and that kinda blows me away.  Mind you, I can't exactly run over to their profiles and start comparing branches on the family tree because I still don't have birth names to share.  Until I do, contacting any of these people to hunt down members of my family tree is largely pointless.  But I'm not gonna lie...just knowing there are actual people out there in the world with my DNA blew me away.  I cried.  I did.  I felt a little like a fool doing so, but I still did.

Now I want even more to pursue my history.  I want more than just a vague "you were here" red dot on a map.  At 47, I don't necessarily have a burning desire to meet or start up a relationship with my birth parents, even assuming they could be found (I'll cross that bridge if and when I ever come to it), but I do want information.  I would like to find out their names and backgrounds so I can plug it all in at Ancestry.com and maybe have a prayer at long last of making all those connections for my own line.  I want to build my own history as a gift both to myself and to my daughter.  I want to be able to stop hiding behind all the masks I've made for myself over the years and discover instead those bits of myself I've been missing all this time.  What would it be like to see my face on someone else for the very first time in my life?  I've never looked like anyone before, not really, even though I'm constantly hearing from strangers that I look like their ex-wife's cousin's brother's mailman or whatever.  But that's not the same.  What must it be like to exchange a lifetime of pseudo-anonymity for a better understanding of one's own history?  Likely nothing will come of it all, but who knows?  Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?  Chances are I won't be related to royalty like the girlie and hubs; more likely I'll descend from a McDonald's fry cook or from a long line of people who spent time in the stockade for being a wise-ass.  Wouldn't that be poetic justice?  Still, I'd take it all in a heartbeat, just for the luxury of knowing one way or the other.  Perhaps someday.

In the meantime, the following is a poem I found a long time ago and have always loved; it's dedicated to all my fellow adoptees out there.