Monday, April 9, 2018

My DNA Story, After 35 Years and Change, has Reached a Fork in the Road.

 The course of my life has been an ever churning torrent of rise and recede. Carving great canyons like the Rio Grande of home. A singular life, witness to: wonders and horrors, experience and innocence, rain and shine. No matter the circumstance this life is mine and strangely enough, i'm pretty damn good with that. 
Like many of you, i jumped out of the nest the instant I thought I had feathers. I had plans. For years I watched those plans fall by the wayside. Largely, they were fanciful dreams never really meant to be applicable in the modern world. Seriously, how was I ever going to play trumpet for Ed Shaughnessy and Doc Severinsen on The Tonight Show?? (I had to look up the spelling of one of those words. On the up side, it wasn't Ed.) Then there was my perverse desire to study giant squid with Jacques Cousteau. Me, a Desert Rat from West Texas.......not bloody likely. Finally, there is the thesis of this opus, finding my biological Father. Again one of those fanciful dreams, until Genealogical DNA testing went mainstream.

Back in February (2018) I bought a DNA kit from Family Tree for the Family Finder and a moderate Y DNA kit. I thought if I were going to search the databases, i'd want to use the narrowest possible criteria going in and could widen my search results from there. I uploaded my raw DNA file to GEDmatch.com and compared with even more people (see the previous two entries for the complete story). There were something in the neighborhood of 78 Thousand cousins on the GEDmatch list from Second Cousin to God only knows how to calculate the relationship. But, as I alluded to in my last posting there was one person at the top of my match chart with a remarkable amount of shared DNA. In fact, He was a perfect half match to me. Just for the tally sheet that would be 3487cM (Centimorgans) That's a Parent/Child match.

I'm going to call him, Mr Y! Now for the most important question, how old is (Oh yeah, present tense, he's very much still alive) Mr Y?? I'll tell you I nearly passed out when I discovered he is not in his 20's or 30s. He's at just the right age for a Father. Well, for a Father with an adult child in their early 50's anyway. At this moment, I needed a minute or two to wrap my head around the impossibility of things. So, I walked away from my computer and just mentally gnawed on that gristle all night.
The next day I ran a utility program to determine whether or not my raw file had been corrupted and it turned out to be a bit noisy, but well within guidelines.
I compared Mr Y to known relatives and my X matches and there were zero commonalities. Okay, so he's a new and stand alone entity. What to do now? Research. Can I put him and my mother in the same location at the same time. This turned out to be the easiest step of the process. He went to college in the same town Mom went to high school. Ultimately, I discovered they both went to that same high school and had a class together.

 There was never a question as to whether to contact him or not it was simply how. The Database had an email address for him, so ding dong there ya go. Now, I studied English Composition at the University of North Texas and have had training in how to write for nearly any occasion or purpose. Writing to contact a Father from an unknown child, weirdly enough, slipped by the curriculum committee when they were deciding on what was important to teach. I sent an email loosely styled on an obituary. I did my very best to use soft pleasant words that alluded to a close genetic match and so on and so forth, sent it, and waited about a week.
During this time, I forgot the first rule of writing and that is know your audience. Every day that went by without a reply was grueling. Why wouldn't he answer? Then my crazy started kicking in. What if he had died and noone had updated the website at his job? What if he thinks this is an internet hoax or scam? What if he's batshit crazy too and just refuses to reply. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. On day six, I sent him another email. This time it was styled on an Arnold Schwarzenegger action film character birthday greeting. Sort of?? 

The main concern for me, now that I had found Mr Y was that I really wanted to know if there were any medical conditions which ran in his family. It's wasn't long after I sent the second email and BING!!! I got a reply. simply enough, he wanted to know who my mother was and what color my hair was when i was a baby/kid. Additionally he wanted to know where I lived. I obliged and said that my grandmother had always said I was "Toe Headed". I think that's how you spell it, I've never looked it up. In the very next email he advised me that if I hadn't had a colonoscopy yet, I needed to go ahead and have that done. I'm not sure what I was looking for in an email, but that didn't exactly not count. and I said I would do just that knowing it to be a favorite of men everywhere!!!

This is the part of the story that gets more private. I'm not doing it to be mean, rather i'm doing it to be fair for all the other parties involved. I will say that since making initial contact Mr Y and I have shared a number of emails. This past weekend Mr and Mrs Y shared a marathon phone call with my domestic partner and myself. I will say a little about that call as I believe it germane to the greater thesis.
The call had a relaxed familiarity to it, even at times when it should have been awkward at best. As we talked, we discovered similarities in behavior and interest. So much so that I grew weary of Donna hitting me every time one came up. It was like being Indiana Jones at the end of a successful caper.

We plan to meet up with the Y's (Face to Face) in the near future. I, for one, am looking forward to it. I know the Domestic Partner is as well and so are the Y's. If you are reading this because you have questions about your ancestry, no matter the case, I say, stop waiting and get after it. Keep an open mind as nothing is ever how you picture it. That Indian Princess your grandpa's grandpa married might turn out to be Irish, and you won't be sitting around years from now wishing you had done it.

I genuinely have a fondness for The Y's as they are a matched set. I don't know how to compartmentalize this and am not about to try. I have found the rest of my family and i'm grateful. Many times I'm derided for my view of fair weather Christians and what Jimmy Buffett referred to as, "that thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning." It is true, I am a confirmed Catholic, but i tend to lean more toward a Unitarian point of view. Toward that end, I do so thank God for this ever winding path, the family I have (old and brand spanking new), and all of you whom have touched my life along the way. I have found a peace I believed impossible.


Until I write again, Peace be with You!!!
Dave

2 comments:

  1. My mother is hoping to find her bio dad through these services, too, but so far no luck! Mazel tov to you and Mr Y!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Given the ages involved it'll be tough, but with some mapping and the testing of some younger relatives I don't think it would be impossible to back build her family tree. Sincerely, if I can ever help please feel free to gimme a call. And Thank You! Dave

      Delete