More DNA

 I was reviewing this blog and read a title from 2011 called, "DNA."  Knowing what I know now, I went back and re-read it and the entire thing is a facepalm.  Here is what has happened since then:

My Dad got his DNA results back in 2011 and they were weird.  Middle Eastern?  What?  My granddaddy (his dad) was the whitest man I've ever known.  My grandmother does look more European, so we thought she might be Italian, but no...that came from Dad's Y gene as well.  We really didn't think much else about it at that time.

In 2016 Joe and I did the whole Ancestry.com thing because we were fascinated and because our DNA is already "out" there because we were both military.  Joe's came back half-Korean, half-Polish, which directly contradicted the family research his sister, Cathy, had done.  Joe was supposed to be half-British, basically.  Mine came back super mutty.  I have 70% UK/western Europe and 30% middle eastern (specifically Lebanon and some Egyptian).  That was weird but cool and we were able to tell our kids that they have a little bit of everything.  

We ignored Ancestry.com for a bit...2 years to be exact, and on January 1, 2018, Joe just decided to log in and see if we had any other hits for family members we may not know.  When he logged in, his profile said, "T. Trojanowski is your father."  (It gave his full name.)  Joe was in shock.  I was downstairs watching tv and he called my name in that way that I knew something was wrong.  He just showed me his computer screen and said, "What does this mean?"  I am a science nerd.  Most people who know me know that, and that I read medical journals for fun.  I felt so torn, but I gently said, "Babe, I think that means that Wayne wasn't your biological father and that this guy is."  

Joe went into investigator mode (all legally, I might add) and found the guy and what appeared to be his two sons on Facebook.  He also found a phone number listed for the guy, so he called and left a message and sent FB messages to the two brothers.  I'll skip the middle details, but suffice to say, the guy is, in fact, Joe's biological father.  That doesn't negate the fact that Wayne was Joe's Dad, but it definitely shook Joe's world.  Shortly after that, we found out that Joe had kidney cancer and his new-to-him niece had just finished a year-long battle with kidney cancer (different kind, but still poignant) and it helped Joe to just not worry about his outcome.  He gained more family out of the situation and, although we may never know what really happened so many years ago, Joe is very grateful for our new family members.  So, Joe's world was rocked in January and again in April 2018, which is also the month and year that Caylea got married, so our 2018 started off HUGE, TREMENDOUS, if you will.  

My Dad did TONS of family research from the time I was 17-ish until I was in my 30s.  He could never really get to the real roots of our family because people didn't want to answer questions, something we never understood.  In May of 2018, my parents were coming to stay with us for the summer and had gone back to our hometown in TX for a few days, at which point my Dad was telling someone about Joe's DNA situation.  That person said, "Well, I never wanted to be the one to tell you, but your dad wasn't your biological either."  Talk about a lightbulb, punch-in-the-gut moment!  Turns out, my Dad's biological father was a dentist that my grandmother (my Dad's mom) worked for right before she married my not-granddaddy.  (That's what my brother and I call him, just to clarify.  Our "granddaddy" who was with us our whole lives is still our granddaddy, but we call him "not-granddaddy" just to clarify about DNA.)  Anyway, my grandmother was pregnant with my Dad when she got married and apparently most of the family knew that the dentist was the father, not my "not-granddady."  Dad's world was rocked, but in a different way because so many people had lied to his face for so many years.  

So, Joe's dad wasn't his biological father, and my Dad's dad wasn't his biological father, and apparently people liked their secrets back then.

After all of this, I looked at Joe and said, "Our 3 children are all yours and you can do whatever test you want to prove it!"  :D

Don't worry, Dad and Joe are fine...it can still be unbelievable at times, but at the end of the day, the best family is the family you choose, whether they are related by blood or not.