One of them would be me.
You see, I have a whole side of family relations that I know nothing about---on my mother's side. Granted, this is something that I could easily live without. I have for several decades.
But still...to find such close relatives at such a point in your life. How unsettling, miraculous, and fun that can be simultaneously.
I thought about it all. Indeed, if you are regular visitors to this on-line nonsense, you've heard a lot of tales about my family as I grew up. My paternal grandparents who owned the house that my parents and I lived in. You've seen a lot of old photos of my family's holiday gatherings. There have been no mysteries. My life has been an open blog.
Alas, amidst all those Technicolor photos, you have seen very little evidence or information about the other side of the family. My mom's. Any pictures on that are in empty frames.
There are no photos because I never saw any. I'm not sure if my mom even had snapshots of her parents. If she did, they might have been stored way back in her own memory drawer.
I know this much. My mom and her older sister were born in New York City. Depending upon how she felt on a given day, the actual year of birth would change by one or two. Their parents were named John and Esther. As the slim story goes, they both got sick with influenza about that time in our history when such an ailment was a fatal disease. The pre-antibiotic era. Allegedly, they died practically in succession. One apparently got sick and then gave it to the other. And out. My mom was about ten. Her sister was about twelve.
I know they both wound up in the Leake and Watts orphanage that still exists in Yonkers, New York. As a matter of fact, my mom had to contact them for some records when she was filing some official documents when she retired. She was on their mailing list. How long were she and my aunt there? No clue.
When the inquisitive me asked questions about any of this, my mom's standard response was sort of like a press representative for a politician.
"I have no information at this time."
Or something like that.
Do you have any photos?
"No."
What did they do for a living?
"I was too young."
Were there any other relatives?
"I don't think so."
Hmmm. I don't think so.
Back when I was a kid, there was a common resource when you wanted information from one parent. You asked the other one.
Dad was no help.
"Your mother doesn't want to talk about any of that."
Okay, so that means he asked the question, too.
Opening the curtain on our lives even further, I can tell you that, in later years, both my mother and my aunt had...well...a love of beer. I wouldn't say they were out-and-out alcoholics but there were frequent evenings with multiple buzzes going. If we went to visit my aunt and her family out on Long Island, both women were fairly fuzzy within the first two hours.
Hmmm. What is behind that?
I never knew. And was only left to purely speculate.
Years later, I tried to broach the issue again coming at it from my status as a full-grown adult. Not long before she passed away, my mom got the question again.
"It was complicated."
Today that's what people use on Facebook to describe their relationship status. Back then, it was my family's way of avoiding a question and/or an issue.
Are there any relatives I am missing? Did John and Esther have brothers and sisters? This would have given my mother and my aunt cousins. Maybe it gives me second and third cousins removed. A whole extended family. I mean, my maternal grandparents weren't aliens from outer space who just showed up on Planet Earth. I mean, what were the odds Mon's parents were both only children? Right?
This was all enough to keep me thinking. A while back, I circled back to the aforementioned orphanage, again still in operation in Yonkers. I explained who I was and wondered to the very nice person if there were any records albeit dusty of my mom and her sister. I mean, somebody had to be the one to sign them up into the place. Or was it Miss Hannigan from "Annie?"
Well, good news. They actually did research and gleefully reported back to me several weeks later.
"We located the records. Your mother came to us in 1985."
Um, you got the wrong woman. One more dead end and this kind of ineptitude is usually found in either the Post Office or the Department of Motor Vehicles.
I've thought about that Ancestry.com program. I signed into it for a trial. I was immediately asked questions for more information. I suddenly turned into my parents.
I don't know.
I shelved the notion again. Until last month.
An actress friend of mine, associated with one of my projects, did a video on-line where she showed herself actually doing the spit test with Ancestry.com. I'm not sure what her goal was. Given her history working on daytime soap operas, she might be looking for the unknown twin brother or perhaps a doppelganger with her name. If I remember her backstory correctly, her character was a twin where the two kids each had different fathers.
I doubted my background would be that much fun. But when we got together for some pre-Christmas feasting and libations, we talked about her test and my interest in doing one. She was not that pleased with Ancestry.com and suggested I use 23andMe, which is supposedly a lot more detailed.
I spit about a week later and I'll see what happens about six weeks from now. Perhaps, by next Christmas, I'll have a whole slew of new relatives to send cards to.
Or, ideally, I simply might have a little more information on who I am...and where I came from.
Watch this space for breaking news.
Dinner last night: Moo shu pork from Mandarin Kitchen.
No comments:
Post a Comment