on finding my roots

Just before the end of last year, I got the results of a much longed-for DNA test.  During my time of financial worry and necessary frugality, I kept a small list of things I wanted to acquire if things improved.  While this list still holds a scanner for my photographs, a UV light for making my lumens and cyanotypes indoors, and a Leica camera (ha), I felt compelled to order that DNA test.

I can’t say why exactly this is so important to me.  Maybe because I was “partially” adopted.  Meaning that my mother’s second husband adopted me. Korous was his surname.  And while my birth father tried to visit me, he was always sent away by my mother and grandmothers, and later my adopted father.  I was also told he was a “bad man."  When you keep hearing that, you come to believe it.

Having my DNA tested might also be important to me as I am the last of this particular family line.  Perhaps I just want to try and leave some sort of story, on the outside chance anyone is interested.  I always knew my birth father was Polish, or as he liked to say, “White Russian."  White Russia

So maybe not exactly Polish as we think of it.  But growing up, this was never talked about.  I was Swedish.  As I got older and pointed out that there was also some Dutch in my background due to my maternal grandfather’s last name, I was told yes, but not enough to matter.  You are Swedish.  That is all.  Because of the foods that were prepared in our home and how our holidays were celebrated, I went with it and relished in it.

But I also had this fascination with France and all things French.  Was it due to books I devoured as a child?  As the map shows, northwestern Europe would include northern France along with the Netherlands.  Ah ha!  That might explain it.  My love of British accents might be explained, as well, along with my use of British spellings.

What can be seen is how little I am actually Swedish.  But knowing this will not change how I celebrate Christmas nor my love of Swedish pancakes, Scandinavian design, Nordic Noir fiction, and glögg.  I have no idea who was Norwegian, as that never discussed.  Some brief dalliance? And these findings would explain why my great grandma could converse in perfect German with my aunt’s German mother.  (I was told at one time I resembled Nastassja Kinski, for the record.)

What really surprises me is how I’m am mostly Eastern European and Russian.  My adopted father was Bohemian.  His family came from Bohemia which was part of the former Czechoslovakia.  Pretty interesting.

All these questions and what ifs flood my mind.  Some quite fanciful.  My mother didn’t seem to “fit” the mold.  My maternal great grandmother Emma, my maternal grandma Myrle, my son, and I all were similar souls: creative, curious, artistic, good with the home arts (cooking, sewing, entertaining), if somewhat introverted.  My mother, while introverted, was not any of those things.  Not at all.  Was my grandma actually my mother?  I did the math.  It would be possible.

I did connect with my birth father many years ago.  My son and I invited Bill and Ilene to Easter dinner.  Jason pulled me aside and asked what was wrong with him.  Smart boy. I, too, felt there was something “off."  Around the same time my mother told me (finally!) that he’d been abusive.  When I asked him about this, he questioned why I was bringing this up as it was ancient history. I told I had just found out, so it was not ancient history to me and stopped taking his calls.

I tried contacting my birth father recently.  He is still alive.  I sent a letter as I know how alarming a phone call might be.  I have gotten no response.  I understand.  I also posted a photo and wrote a post in my neighbourhood group on Facebook asking if anyone knew him as he was a postman in a nearby neighbourhood and lived in mine.  I heard from a woman whose father had had a bar near where I now live.  My father rented a garage space from him.  Bill and sometimes Ilene would drop in to pay the rent and have a cocktail.  This woman said there was something wrong with both of them. That back then they were called "slow."  And that now she understands that they were probably somewhere on the autism spectrum.  That would explain his Section 8 discharge out of the armed services. And that might explain his violence toward my mother. And it might also explain how he always seemed to be medicated.  But what could it say about me?

Now I wondered if I had myself to blame for my son’s suicide.  I knew my ex had mental issues, whether he was bipolar as he claimed, I don’t know for sure, but something was wrong.  But did the combination of both of our gene pools give our sweet boy the makeup that was his demise?  It is almost too much to take in and process.  All these years, I could somehow survive by placing the blame on him, as wrong as that may be.

I wish Louis Gates would do a few episodes featuring regular people. And I wish he’d choose me.

I will delve deeper over time.  I am still processing the new information about my father and my DNA.  I don’t know where to put some of these things.  I still would love to know why my ancestry was such a secret.  What other secrets might there be?

In the meantime, I still identify as Swedish and Dutch.  But am very happy to add French (yes... despite the map not specifically naming France) as I always feel at home there, especially in Paris.  And Polish.  In other words, an American mutt.