Secrets

 Good starting points before you venture into this post: The circumstances around my adoption: https://acustatic.blogspot.com/2013/11/november-22-1963.html

...and more importantly, this post, which is a complete primer for all of you who may be trying to catch up on what this is about: https://acustatic.blogspot.com/2010/09/october-1963.html

Good to go? 

OK, buckle up. Because as hard as this has been for ME to keep up with this far, in the last two months it has become exponentially more confusing, confounding, surprising, life-changing and life-affirming.

Lynda and I had started watching "Finding Your Roots" on PBS earlier this year, and we love the show's surprising and moving revelations. One night, an ad for 23andMe and their DNA test popped up, and I decided to take it because there was missing information on my paternal side of my family.

To be honest, all I knew growing up was that I was part "Polish", because that was what the adoption paperwork said. When I found my birth mother, I learned that was a lie: she didn't know who my father was, so she couldn't have given them that information. Either the hospital or the adoption agency fabricated that info, for reasons that are lost to history (and good riddance. Lying about that stuff should have been illegal.)

So I took the DNA test mostly just to confirm whether there was, in fact, any Polish ancestry in me. When I got the results, I saw that there was none. I'm almost 100% English and Irish, as anglo as a white dude can be, except for the small bit of Scandinavian, which is probably just the Vikings raping and pillaging the British Isles.

But wait - it says I have a 1st cousin, once removed. And it says she lives ten minutes from me. And I look her up on Facebook and we have ten mutual friends. And I send her a message and she replies and we talk that very night. And we determine quickly that she is not on my birth mother's side of my family tree...

I have found my father's family.

We meet, and with a bit of sleuthing (had to have been in Denver in Jan.-Feb. of 1963), we narrow it down to a single branch of her 1st cousins, and within days, I have a lead on who my father may be: one of three brothers. My birth mother has taken the same DNA test, so I know it's not on her side of the family.

You may think that is where this blog post is going. And maybe it is. But before we get to the end, there is a surprise detour:

Another DNA relative pops up. It's a niece. On my mother's side of the family tree.

Before I go further, it's important you understand that I have no children. (Topic for another blog post.) When I found my mother, she said that she had a daughter. Wow!, I thought. I have a half-sister! Yes, I do, but she also had no children.

(It is the ultimate irony that the dude that has no children finds himself these last few months over and over explaining to breeders how DNA percentages, half-siblings, cousins once removed, etc. all works. But here we are.)

So this means only one thing: my mother gave up more than one child for adoption, and that child has a child, that is my niece.

The world flips once again. The new half-sister is the middle child of my mother. I am the youngest. I now, instantly, have (half-) nieces, nephews and great nieces and nephews...

...and Ellen has grandchildren and great-grandchildren overnight.

We're parsing through how to handle this: do we tell Ellen? how? The connection with our new sister, Sarah, is coming soon. How will she process all of this?

Those questions are pressing, but in the meantime, there is this:

At least one person on my father's side has taken the DNA test, and results should be in within the next couple of weeks. Those results will be either affirmed or furthered by another person on that side that has said she will take it. Regardless, I will almost assuredly know who my birth father is within the next month or two.

So what does this all mean?

For me, personally, clearly it is huge. I know who I am, but knowing where I came from has always been a blank slate. I found out a little bit in 2009. This year? It's like a deluge of information: siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, uncles,... perhaps even a father.

But for society, I see a wholly different outcome: There are no secrets anymore. Cel phone cameras, computer tracking,... DNA testing. You beat a dude on the street? Someone caught it on their phone. You following the Proud Boys to take down the Capitol? The FBI just got your computer.

You fathered a child or gave one up for adoption? Get ready, because they will find you.

And know that if it's me, I'm going to love the hell out of you for the rest of your life.

Not all secrets lead to bad endings.