Anyone in the mood for a quickie?

*** This is Part 11! Start at Part 1 so you don't miss any of the juicy details!***

Has it really been 5 months?

Jeez Louise, where does the time go? If you're me, it just disappears and you neglect your blog like a degenerate. ;-p

At least I have big updates!! But, I don't have a lot of time to go through the nitties and the gritties, cuz I gotta start packing! That's right, I am leaving on a jet plane to go meet my NewDad!

I leave in less than 48 hours and I am a bundle of emotions right now. I can't sleep. I am so excited, and so nervous.

In other news, I submitted my DNA a third time... and it was the charm! I am not an alien. I'm an actual human being who found a biological father match on Ancestry, in black and white. It's still surreal.

Another cool thing was Father's Day and NewDad's birthday. My sisters L and S and I went in together (well, I owe them a glass of wine when I see them, lol) on a gift, a personalized wall hanging with all of our names and birthdays, and he opened it during a video chat with all of us. And I sent him a new fishing hat and some pins that signify important things, and not so important things. I'm bringing another pin with me to add to the collection.

So yeah. Kind of a scattered update. But things are great!

10. Two-time Failure and Other Small updates

*** This is Part 10! Start at Part 1 so you don't miss any of the juicy details!***

Apparently, I'm a two-time failure. At least at DNA testing. 

But, fear not! I have found the reason! I have been taking a medication that is a chemotherapy agent and didn't know that it affects DNA. I found this Ancestry Support thread that confirms this. Massive bummer.

Sources I have found have said you have to wait "several months" after stopping therapy to be able to test again. But my test results aren't necessary, I just really wanted to see it in print there on the screen.

My half-sister L has gotten her results back and she matched to The Girl as expected. There's no denying, I've got a NewDad.  :) 

Speaking of NewDad ... This happened:

And ... I came out of the Facebook closet tonight! Out and proud with NewDad!

And... and... The Boy will packing his bags and heading here to paradise!

I guess it's time to stop numbering the posts. You guys know everything that's happened 'til now. Well, everything fit for public consumption, at least. I'll keep updating as things progress. We're still in baby stages here. Has it really only been a little over 6 weeks? Wow.

9. Delays and Defective Spit

*** This is Part 9! Start at Part 1 so you don't miss any of the juicy details!***

We are almost caught up to present day with major developments, and will be mostly by the end of this post ... though I'm sure bits and bobs will float out that I forgot to mention.

Let's start with the fact that it is now February 23rd. It's been a full month plus a couple of days since we got The Girl's results. Mine were *supposed* to be ready on January 31st, but I got a notice from Ancestry that my sample had failed likely due to a defective or improper sample. What a fricking bummer! Like, seriously! I failed a spit test. LOL

At this point, we are in no doubt due to the DNA connection through my daughter, but we were still really wanting to see it come through on the Ancestry match list in black and white: Father/Daughter. That was how I was going to come out of the DNA closet on Facebook, by posting a screenshot. Now I had to wait for them to send a new kit, do the test again, mail the kit back, and now wait again through the even more crowded post-holiday test queue.

(insert all the expletives)

As of yesterday, we are finally beginning the processing stage and have a 2 to 4 week estimate.

In other news, this happened on February 4th ...

That's right! We talked on the phone! :-D  I'll keep the contents to myself, but I will say it was fantastic and there were laughs and happy tears on both sides. I heard his his voice! I could feel and hear how happy he was to be talking to me and how much he wants me to be a part of his life and it felt so good! I can't even put it into words.

About two weeks ago, I was starting to plan a trip back to my hometown for May. I was looking at tickets and trying to work out an itinerary for The Girl and I from Hawaii and The Boy from the Midwest to get to New England at roughly the same time ... when a series of events led to the possibility that The Boy might be living here in Hawaii and not in the Midwest pretty soon. It's not going to stop my visit -- no way is it going to stop it -- but it will potentially delay it a couple of months. And The Boy would be starting a new job if he moves here, so he may not have vacation time to go until next year.

I'm going to be a little sad sack-ish right now and say that I feel like I've been in a holding pattern for the last month and it looks like I'll still be holding for a bit. I talk to either NewDad or M just about daily via texting and messaging, but I still want those results. I am happy at the prospect of The Boy moving here, but sad that it might delay my trip and further delay his. And I wish I could find out for sure if the The Boy will be moving, but we can't rush it too much right now, details being worked out for a potential job so we have to be a little patient.

(We've talked about how patient I am, right?)

8. Sister, Sister!

*** This is Part 8! Start at Part 1 so you don't miss any of the juicy details!***

Are any of you only children? If you are, then you already know there's some pretty sweet things about it, for sure. Never having to share? That would be number one on the list. There's nobody to fight with or steal your stuff.  Being lonely? Never having someone around to play with, talk to, get into trouble with, make memories with? Those would all be on the list of sucky things about being an only child.  That's why my step-sister and I forged our bond. It's a special relationship, but really more like friends who know we'll never NOT be friends because we're also family. 

Now, I have two younger half-sisters! One of them, we shall call her L, is eight years younger than me. The other, S, is two years younger than her.  I also have a step-mom, M.  That's a new one for me, as well. A step-mom who is just as involved and happy about this whole situation as NewDad is. NewDad and M had both been messaging me throughout that first day. By that evening, they had told one of the girls, who would then pass the news along to the other one. 

Only one of the girls is on social media, that would be L, and we connected the following day but didn't get to chat much. The next time we talked, I found out a few things we had in common. More than just looks, because we definitely resemble one another. Similar hair, hairline (can you say fivehead?), mouth, eyes. The resemblance is pretty strong, IMO. This is one of those times I really wish this blog weren't anonymous, because I wish I could show you pictures to illustrate this. 

At which point she said she thought it was cool, too, because she never thought she looked much like the rest of her family.  Guys! Guys! I have a sister that looks like me! The other sister? My daughter looks like her! Same down-turned eyes that crinkle when they smile. Same hint of a dimple. Same smile. Family resemblances! Siblings! A nephew! Oh, my!

We even agreed to share the title of Laziest Person Ever.  :)

It ended up getting late, so we called it an evening, but I thought we were off to a smashing start! We were both lazy f#ck$ with bad hair and eyes who loved dogs and cry a lot. Don't be jealous. Not everyone can share our DNA. ;-P  

I wish S was on Facebook and more inclined to chatting. I hope she eventually accepts me.  She's a bit slower to embrace change -- especially in the form of a surprise older sister, I'm guessing. I understand. No one asked for me to show up in their life and make things confusing and weird.

Either way, this past weekend they told my nephew.  The alphabet letters -- L, S, and M -- took J (I guess I'm sticking with the alphabet theme today?) out to dinner to break the news.  My new (and only biological!) nephew took it with usual teen aplomb: "Oh, cool," and continued to eat his food. I think he'll not be scarred or scandalized, LOL. He did make it clear that there can be only one "Auntie" for him, and that's L. As it should be, kiddo. As it should be. I could never take her place.

7. An Uncomfortable Conversation Has Its Rewards?

*** This is Part 7! Start at Part 1 so you don't miss any of the juicy details!***

I have been putting off writing this post. Sorry about that, if you've been waiting. It's just that my feelings regarding Dad OG are so friggin' complicated.  This is gonna be a long one, folks. Hit the head, grab a drink, and put your feet up. If you have a violin handy to play self-pity music, that might be appropriate here. I've got a lot to unpack here.

I've said before that I had no idea that Dad OG wasn't my father. Nothing was ever said by anyone that ever clued me in or seemed off. So when I say that my father and I weren't close, I'm really saying that we just never had a chance to form a bond. He left my mom when I just a couple weeks old. I know that when people leave marriages they are leaving the partner, not the kids. I may know that, but that's not what I felt. For years, it was his parents who took my visitation weekends instead of him. Sometimes he would visit me there, sometimes not.

We had a good span from about when I was 6 until around 11 where he took me himself on those weekends, and those were good years. But then he remarried and moved out of state and we rarely talked after that. There were visits here and there, but again it was his parents who took my visitation weekends.  When I was in high school, my mom and I moved to another state and contact slowed to a crawl and died shortly after I turned 19. I invited him to my wedding. Either his wife didn't give him the message, or he didn't want to come. I stopped trying after that and he never really tried to begin with. He always seemed happy to see me, when we did see each other, but I don't think I've ever felt that feeling of true parental love from him like I knew from my mom.

I've basically spent the last 46 years thinking he never wanted me and I'm carrying some pretty deep emotional scars. Textbook daddy issues. How I managed to find a solid man and stay married this long, I'll never know! LOL. Despite time and age, I still cry when I think about Dad OG and how hurt I have felt for so many years. I've let that hurt get in the way of having better relationships with that side of my family. I viewed them with the same lens and figured they must not love me as much as the other grandkids if my own father didn't seem to love me. This wasn't fair to them and I regret that, but I was kid experiencing rejection and feeling abandoned.

All of that said, I still thought I owed it to him to let him know that he wasn't my biological father. And that was not a call I was looking forward to. 

Once we were on the phone, I didn't really ease into things. I kind of got right to the point and said that I'd had some DNA testing done and figured out that he wasn't my biological father. His response?

"You know, I kind of always wondered about that, but your mom swore."

Hold up! What?! This response might have been what you all were expecting after hearing me describe our relationship, but I was thrown for a loop.

"So, you knew?"

"Well, I was never really sure."

Any calm, cool, or collected I had managed to muster up for this call promptly went bye-bye and through my first round of sobs I asked, "Is that why you left and why you never wanted me?" I told him that from my vantage point, I grew up with a mostly absentee father that didn't try very hard to be in my life.  I had never expressed these feelings to him. I don't think I've even cried around him since the days of skinning my knees. He was wholly unprepared for how emotional I was. Quite plainly, I was a fucking wreck.

As usual, I'm a terrible witness when it comes to emotional conversations. The general gist is that his doubts never affected how he felt about me and that, yes, he loves me. The test results didn't change anything. I'm still the only daughter he has. This revelation led me to another feeling, one that I didn't express. If it didn't change anything, then that means he was just a terrible father. Is that the unspoken thing here between us? Was he just incapable of bonding in that way? Maybe he was. Maybe I really did get everything he was capable of regardless of any doubts he may have once had. Where did that leave us? That last question I did actually say to him.

This was probably the first honest conversation we'd ever had, so maybe we build on that. Let's try to keep in touch. Text messages, small talk. I could handle that. I figure not talking to him doesn't change the past, but talking to him now in this new light might help heal some of the scars. I would try. Maybe he would, too.

After we got off the phone, we texted addresses to each other and then I sent him a snapshot of when I was a baby. It was him, me, his mom, and his grandma.

I'm not sure I can overstate how caught off guard he was by my hysterical crying, because he kept asking if I was okay the next few times we texted.

So that's the long and woeful tale of my talk with my estranged Dad OG. We'll see if this keeping in touch thing continues. I'd like to be hopeful, but I still feel pretty strongly about how unincluded I felt on that side of the family and how unimportant I seemed in his life in general. But, I am glad I made that call and was able to at least get a little of it expressed to him so he would know how bad he hurt me. 

You're still here? I can't believe you're still here. Thank you. This was a raw and emotional post to write and it's ridiculously long. I did warn you, though. ;-P  The next post will be more upbeat. I promise! 

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6. Wow ... Just WOW.

*** This is Part 6! Start at Part 1 so you don't miss any of the juicy details!***

In the last episode, I had made contact with a surprise biological father via an Ancestry DNA test.  It was still Thursday morning and I had lost count of how many times we had said, "Wow." I swore a lot, too ... but I didn't type those. I had just met the man! I wanted him to have a good impression of me. :)  There was plenty of time for him to realize that I'm not so great at watching my language. Just fill in the blanks with your favorite four-letter-words and you've probably got a pretty good idea. ;)

We messaged back and forth for the next several hours. I had two sisters -- and I definitely looked like one of them! I had been an only child my whole life. I had a step-sister who was also an only child, too, and she and I vowed to "keep each other" when our parents got divorced. We did, too. I am grateful for that relationship. But, now I also had two half sisters. That is, if they wanted to know me. I couldn't assume. With my two, he now had three grandchildren. In one fell swoop I had just doubled his progeny, and he couldn't send enough heart emojis to show how blessed he felt. (Right?! Talk about a warm reception!)

We took turns filling each other in on the more major events in our lives and asking questions of one another. We sent pictures back and forth and generally tried to cram way too much into a few hours of messaging. I busted out my box of old pictures and sent him snaps of some of my baby pictures, pics of the kids, my wedding.  He graduated ahead of my mom and was drafted and sent to Vietnam, right into the thick of it. He shared a few pictures he took over there as a combat photographer (the kind of stuff you'd see in the National Archives. Read more here, it's fascinating!). Of course I had seen similar pictures before, but this time it really hit home that the man on the other end of the chat window had taken them, had been there, had survived those events when many of the subjects had not. It was really kind of awing.

At some point that day, he reached out to his brother (my new uncle!) about the news and sent him my name and picture. Turns out New Uncle and I had worked together about 10 years ago and he remembered me! Once I was told that connection, the name clicked and I knew exactly who he was. His office was right by my department for at least a couple years. Another coincidence to add to a strange week! LOL

It had been a LONG day full of emotion and information and pictures and tears. One of my biggest fears going into this was feeling rejected by another father (I'll get into more about Dad OG in the next post). It seems my fears were unfounded. New Dad, as I had started to refer to him around the house because conversations were beginning to become confusing, definitely wanted to know me and I was very happy about that indeed.

I still had questions, though. Like, did Dad OG know? Were my sisters going to want to know me? When were my DNA results finally going to be done? What was going to happen when the rest of my OG paternal family found out? Was I deluded in thinking you could unearth a New Dad and NOT have it upset the balance of the rest of my life? The answers to these questions and more, on the next episode of Soap. Okay, so really I'm going to drag it out a couple more posts before we catch up to "real time", but we're almost there!

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5. Stranger No More?

*** This is Part 5! Start at Part 1 so you don't miss any of the juicy details!***

It was Thursday morning. I had barely slept and I was now staring at my screen, coffee cup firmly grasped between both hands. The Stranger had replied. Was I looking for him?  

My body was doing that weird adrenaline thing where your hands, feet, and pits all sweat but you're shivering and your hands are shaky. Your tummy wants to drop out of your body and there's no blood flow to your face. You know the feeling, right? It's like stage fright mixed with, "Oh, no. What have I done?"  I stood up and did sort of a full body shake in an attempt to chase away the jitters. Picture a wacky, wavy, inflatable, flailing-armed tube man. Then I went to the bathroom, because coffee.

Finally, I started my reply.

I repeated the whole story. Okay, so I copied and pasted the whole story from the Ancestry message I had sent.  Easier than typing it out. and my hands were still shaking anyhow.  His only question to start with was whether I had ever lived in his area.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Dancing dots.

Breathe.

Dancing dots.

I finally exhaled that bit of breath I didn't realize I was holding, and with it came tears -- not for the first time in the last couple days. They weren't tears of sadness. I was just leaking intense emotion out of my ocular orifices like a frickin' baby. Eyes swollen. Snot flowing. Chest heaving. Full-on ugly cry. 

It was at this point that I got a message from my husband. He knew how anxious I was the whole day and night before. 

He really had no idea.  It was beginning to be chaos. I had message windows open for The Stranger, his wife, my mom's friend, and now my husband. I was going to need that adrenaline now! The day was just beginning. 

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4. Hurry Up and Wait

*** This is Part 4! Start at Part 1 so you don't miss any of the juicy details!***

Once again, I feel a little backstory is helpful. We currently live in Hawaii, but I grew up in New England.  My family moved across the country when I was a teenager, but I always missed my hometown. Years later, I would move back with my own family for another 10 years before moving on again. So basically, I've lived in that town for 25 years of my life but am currently about as far away as I could be and still be in the U.S., so I'm also dealing with a 5 hour time difference. Now, back to the story ...

It was Wednesday morning. Not even 48 hours since I discovered The Stranger. My results still weren't back. I should be waiting for them. I wasn't going to. I had decided to take a two-pronged approach: a short message through Facebook and a longer message through Ancestry.  My hands were shaking when I finally clicked send on the messages.

I spent quite a few minutes watching the Facebook message window, waiting for the notification that the message had been seen. Nothing.  Wednesday was a very long day, full of obsessing.  I didn't sleep much that night. I woke up Thursday morning to a reply and nearly vomited from nerves.

I was going to need some coffee to fortify myself for the day that was to come!

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3. Do you know The Stranger?

*** This is Part 3! Start at Part 1 so you don't miss any of the juicy details!***

A little backstory will be useful here. My mother and father dated their senior year and married a few months after high school. My father's birthday had been called in the draft. They were married for 2 years when she got pregnant with me.  They were divorced by the time I was one.  As for the state of their marriage when I was conceived? I wasn't there. I wasn't told much growing up beyond that it wasn't exactly blissful, but that's all I know at this point. Now, back to the story...

With my newfound gut feeling in hand, I pulled up my mom's friend on Facebook messenger and typed, "Did you and my mom know a guy named The Stranger?" She replied pretty quickly, despite the time difference, "Yeah, your mom and I were friends with The Stranger. Why?"

So I proceed to type out the briefest summary I can of the Ancestry results and finish up my message with the question, "Could he be my father?" The message gets read. A minute passes. Another minute. I don't see her typing anything. No little dancing dots. Then my phone rings. "Okay, so start over at the beginning." I did.

"The Stranger was the love of your mom's life. They dated most of high school."

The oxygen was sucked out of the room. A whole lot of the rest of the conversation is a blur at this point, but the general gist is that, yeah, The Stranger could totally be my dad. And judging by the results I was seeing, or lack thereof in the case of matches associated with my father's side of the family, he totally was.

We left it off with her very sound advice to not do anything rash until I got my results in. We've already learned what I do with sound advice about not doing anything rash, right? That's right! I ignore it completely. Although, to be fair, I didn't ignore it right away. What I did right away was update my small supporting cast of friends who were in the know:

Sorry for the language there, but ever there was a holy shit moment, this would be one, right? Right. I sat with this information for the rest of the night. I hardly slept. I woke up the next day knowing that I would be ignoring the very sound advice I was given.

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2. Clicking for Connections

*** This is Part 2! Start at Part 1 so you don't miss any of the juicy details!***

When last we spoke, I had discovered a Close Family Stranger among my daughter's DNA matches on Ancestry.com.  So I wake up the next morning, still thinking about the Stranger. I can't shake it. My husband, possessing much more patience than I, tells me to just wait until my results come in before I start freaking out about it. He knows me better than this. He knows I possess zero chill. We all know what I spent the day doing, right? Obsessing, of course.

First things first. Let's figure out what these centimorgan things are. I click the little help bubble and see a handy-dandy little chart:

The Stranger is listed as having 1,863 centimorgans.

The Stranger comes in at 1,863, putting them in the "Grandparent, uncle, half-sibling" category. Since they are unrelated to my husband and I have no extra children unaccounted for, I'd say we can safely cross half-sibling off the list. That leaves us with grandparent or uncle. Time to start clicking.

I spend the rest of the day snooping. Come dinner time I have figured out a couple of things:

1. The Stranger was born 22 years before me and lived what appears to be his whole life in my hometown.
2. Every single match on my daughter's match list can be connected to one of three people: my husband, my mother, and the mystery man.

This is the point at which "zero chill" becomes an understatement and I share what I have learned so far privately with with a few friends.

My friends saw exactly where I was going, and they didn't disagree with my logic. Dangit, Ancestry! Why did I have to get The Girl's test results first? Mine weren't estimated to be ready for another 9 days. I surely wouldn't survive that long without knowing. People have died from curiosity. It's known to be deadly to cats, at least. 

That's when I had an epiphany! Although my mom passed away several years ago, I still keep in contact with her life-long, high school best friend. Getting in touch with her was the next step.

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1. A Stranger in the Tree

Let's start the story with a little bit about myself. I'm in my mid-40s. My husband and I have two grown kids -- "grown" being a fairly flexible word, since one of them still lives at home. The Boy is 25 and lives in another state, and The Girl is 21.

My husband's family had gotten Ancestry DNA tests done recently and they were having fun sharing ethnicity results with each other, so for Christmas he bought tests for me and The Girl (I have no idea why he didn't get one for The Boy, but that has since been rectified, LOL). I had been told stories that I was mostly French and English with a bit of a bunch of other stuff thrown in, but no real facts. I was looking forward to finding out for sure.

We mailed them in the day after Christmas and I spent the next couple of weeks putting together a family tree. I was making good progress. I stumbled onto some very thorough tree matches that took my paternal grandfather's line back into French Quebec. So exciting! If I hit a roadblock, I would try working on another person for a bit. I was having quite a bit of fun. Considering each of my parents had been married multiple times, I got to learn how to make changes like that on the tree, too. LOL

My daughter's results came in first, on January 21st. When the three of us gathered around the computer to look, the first thing that I noticed was that there was a bit more French than I had imagined. Cool, that made sense. I had found a lot of relatives in northern Vermont and Canada.  After looking at the estimated ethnicity breakdown, the next thing we clicked on was the DNA matches.  Right up top in the Parent's section we see my husband listed as Father. That's good. In the next section, the section labeled "Close Family," we see 4 matches. We only recognize three of them. 

Names and photos blocked for privacy.

That is definitely odd, but I don't know how this whole centimorgan thing works, so I don't really pay *too* much attention to it. We scroll further and start pointing out people that my husband recognizes from his matches. The other two members of the household quickly start to lose interest, but I can't stop thinking about The Stranger. I click on their profile and look at shared matches between them and my daughter. Not a dang thing I recognize. This is getting curiouser and curiouser. Now I REALLY want my results to hurry up, because I have figured out that The Stranger is from my side of the tree because there is no overlap with my husband's matches. It's going to take more time than one night to dig further, so I head to bed with a Stranger on my mind.

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