HOW 23 & ME
ROCKED MY WORLD
“If what I
say resonates with you, it is merely because we are both branches of the same
tree."- WB Yeats
by
DONNA COLLINS TINSLEY
I went to bed one day knowing I had
four half-siblings and woke up the next day to find that I actually have eight!
My husband bought a 23 & Me test for me a few years ago for a gift. I
wasn’t averse to doing it, I’d already done an Ancestry.Com one that gave me
some startling news but then this one seemed to contradict the first one, so I
was a little confused. But I’m told as more people put their DNA in the
databank, results can change.
The new results looked more like
what my recently found uncle told me about my family roots. 23 & Me has a
page where people can connect with and opt to compare DNA results. Some of my
immediate family are on that page and I hadn’t checked it in a while.
I grew up first living with my
grandmother for some years in Chattanooga Valley, or Flintstone, Georgia, then
with my mom in Florida. She was a single mom, so to speak for most of my
childhood, as her second husband, my stepfather, went to prison for abusing me.
Recently I received this message:
Hello Donna, I’m intrigued by
this half-sister relationship.
What?
Who is this? I’m his half-sister?
At first, he only gave me his
initials but his name followed in days to come as I tried to give him
information about our dad. We texted pictures back and forth and I was
looking for what information I might have about our father. I didn’t grow up
with him and had found out that he died about twenty-one years ago. J had grown
up thinking his dad was his real dad and was pretty startled also when he got
his results. Both of his parents had already passed one as had mine, so there
was no one to really ask but my uncle in Georgia.
Neither one of us is kids, I’m age
68 and J is 62 so it’s not like we thought we might have a relationship with
anyone, although when I found Uncle Henry four years ago, I felt a great sense
of family and closure. I’d called Uncle Henry and told him about the new
brother, who was born in Germany.
“Are you sure about this DNA thing,
Donna?”
My husband says, “DNA doesn’t lie,
Uncle Henry.”
“Donna, your dad never went to
Germany. We all went to Korea.”
Okay, I’m thinking, Uncle Henry
is 90 now and maybe is a little forgetful.
“Well, I’ll call you later in the
week, Uncle Henry. I’m trying to process this,” I told him.
Uncle Henry, who is a true Southern
gentleman and has the best accent around South replied, “Let me make some phone
calls, honey.”
The thing I love about people who
grew up in the Valley is they usually try to help each other out. I actually
found Uncle Henry by a friend on Facebook who grew up with my Mama getting me
connected with him.
Meanwhile I talked with my new brother
on the phone. He’d had a good life, seemed like a cool and funny guy and I felt
pretty good to connect with him. He lives in California and who knows if we’ll
ever meet?
I have a sister in Louisiana and
two brothers within ten miles of me here, that I grew up with and I’m not
really searching for anyone else. In fact, with life getting in the way of
living most of the time, we don’t always see each other much. Surely not as
much as we’d like to.
I found an old Facebook page of my
new half-brother and enjoyed seeing pictures of his family. Lord knows I’ve got
enough things on Facebook that he can pretty much find anything; my life is an
open book.
The next day Uncle Henry called me.
“Donna, are you somewhere that you can talk private?”
Wow, that didn’t sound good.
“Sure, Uncle Henry what’s up?”
“I’ve got the number of someone who will talk
to you. She’s 80-year-old and your dad’s sister.”
“My dad’s sister, you mean your
brother wasn’t my dad?” I could feel the tremble in my voice and my knees
turning to jelly.
“Honey, I didn’t want to tell you
anything bad. Come to find out your mom dated someone else before my brother.
I’ll always still be your uncle though.”
At that moment, I wished he’d been
my dad. He was always encouraging; he’d even told me when I was a baby, he came
to see me when I arrived home from the hospital because his brother was
overseas. One day out of the blue, he called me up and sang a song to me. He is
quite a character and had been balm to a heart who always had Father Hunger.
“That’s true, family is who shows
up for me and you checked on me when I was a baby. I love you. Thanks for the
phone number. I guess I’ll call her.”
“Come see us if you get up this way
in the summer!”
“I will, God bless!”
I couldn’t stop the tears that were
running down my face like rain, as I told my husband and one of my daughters
the news. He came over and gave me a big hug. I think he regretted telling me
all the time, “DNA doesn’t lie,” as he’d grown to love my uncle as much as I
did and the person who’d reunited us was one of our favorite people.
When I called my new aunt,
it didn’t go well. I could see that the information she gave me was probably
all I was going to get and she probably didn’t need a new relative in her life.
When she described where she’d lived as a child, I could picture it in my mind,
a house I passed as a little girl walking to school. When she said everyone knew whose child I
was, it was pretty amazing that I’d never heard it before. Think about the
stigma of a teenager getting pregnant out of wedlock in the fifties. I had a
whole new rush of compassion for my mom. Getting information about my dad from my
mom was never something that worked well for me. Having Jesus Christ as my Lord
gave me a father figure, God, my Father, ever-loving and caring.
I’ve blogged before about something
I call father hunger and the affect that can have on a young girl,
especially. In looking over those blogs, I see that I still relate to those
words. Sometimes I can go months or even years without the deep, soul-wrenching
father hunger because of not growing up with my dad and then something will
strike my heart. Hearing about someone whose memories were of laying upon their
father’s chest as a child, remembering the feel of his scratchy beard, or a
father admitting that he failed in the fathering department can bring me to
tears. Knowing he can’t go back and change the past concerning his lack in
parenting, he decides instead to be the very best grandfather he can be. That’s
an awesome thing to me.
As Father’s Day approaches, we know
that although many of us did not have that true “father” experience while here
on earth, the time in eternity together with the One True Father, Who Never
Disappoints, will be a dream come true. And there will be no more father hunger
for any of us who have experienced that pain.
As with my half-brother who
contacted me, if anyone in my dad’s family happens to find me on 23 & Me,
I’d be glad to correspond. But I’ll not be rocking their world as mine was
rocked one summer day in 2019.
Old blog: https://thornrose7.blogspot.com/search?q=father+hunger
