Close friends know that I detest the limelight and any attention. In a group larger than three people, I will retreat to my own personal cone of silence and simply listen the rest of the night. Part of that is due to the fact that I have a few people in my world who dominate conversations. Not a problem. I still like them. The other factor in that equation is my own sense of self esteem, which could be a lot better. It certainly is light years ahead of where it used to be in high school and college, but it still often drops to the negative side from time to time.
Personality-wise, I know what I got from my father and what I got from my mother and also what I got from my grandmother who was in the same house with us. Stoicism and logic from Dad. Impulsiveness from Mom. Stubbornness and impatience from Grandma. Talk about extremes. My body remains to this day their battleground. I wish I had come up with that analogy myself. Nope, that was discerned by an all-too-intuitive ex-girlfriend.
But, as I have written here before, the actual DNA composition of Len has intrigued me as it has done many others of late. Who hasn't sent in their spit to be analyzed? Some people are simply curious as to what DNA they received from which part of the world. Me? I was hoping and even praying to be enlightened with any information about my mother's side of the family. For the lack of details I have, they might as well have come to Earth via interplanetary pods.
So, these ancestry divining rods were a big gift idea last Christmas and I simply gifted myself. I used 23andMe.com which was recommended by a friend or two and I dutifully loaded up my vial of saliva around New Year's Eve. I had heard that some people had actually connected with third or fourth cousins they never knew about. Now let's be real. I wasn't necessarily looking to geometrically increase my holiday card address file. But I've always wondered...
I got virtually zero details over the years about my maternal grandparents. According to my mom, they died almost in succession from the flu decades ago when they all lived in an antibiotic-free existence. She and her older sister were dumped like Annie and the ruffians in a Yonkers orphanage, which still is around today. Several years ago, I did approach the place to see if they had any old records. I mean, somebody had to have left them off there, right? Well, the lady at the orphan dwelling was quite nice and was certainly no Miss Hannigan. But she was about as useful as power brakes on a snail. Apparently, my mom and my aunt simply appeared there one day out of the mist.
To make genetic matters even worse, my mother never shared a photo of her parents with me. Did she even have one? Unclear. It was one of those unspoken questions of which my parents had in Costco-like quantities. All I ever got was the details above and their names.
John Morgan. Esther Morgan.
Okay, his name alone is quite common and probably popular in motel registers on a Saturday night. Try to google that in some old official record files. I did that and the first name to jump out was J.P. Morgan. Okay, my only really connection there is my Chase checking account. As for Esther, this is almost equally as common. Looking at old archives and trying to filter out information that connects their names with my mother and her sister? Needle. Haystack.
Complicating matters is that my mom went through much of her life using only her middle name. Did her mother do the same? Is Esther a middle name, too? I could see that's a kind of daffiness that can be handed down like old clothing. But, in essence, I began to doubt that any of them even existed.
Mom told me once they were born in New York. Upstate? Downstate? Bumfuk County? Who knows? But they had to have some sort of European roots, correct? And I've always thought that the likelihood of my maternal grandparents both being only children was probably not high. Which would mean they had brothers and sisters. Which would mean my mother and my aunt might have had first cousins. Which would mean I would have cousins beyond the six first cousins I know about.
So, I spit and 23andMe.com spit back what you see above. That is me. And, like pretty much everybody, I am a human mongrel. A little of everything and a lot of nothing. I was astounded by the Scandinavian contribution. I always thought those people were blonde and incredibly good looking. No and very no. The German portion was no surprise given my dad's end of things. 1% Italian. Well, that had to be honorary given the neighborhood I grew up in. Or maybe I had pizza the night before I coughed up my spit.
Actually, 23andMe.com does send you a wealth of information and, as I learned, they predicted close to 1200 potential "cousins" for me. As I perused the roster, I noted that only 2 of the 1200 were predicted "second to third cousins." Neither of their names rang a bell. One of them appeared to be a young actor in Texas. The headshot on his profile was a dead giveaway. The rest of the lot were forecast to be "third to sixth cousins." All this reminded me just how much the human race is connected.
But, back to square one, I still had my mother's side of the family which seemed to be connected to no one else either living or dead.
But, separately, my childhood best pal Leo took it upon himself to do some research on a variety of websites for me. He just might be the smartest person I know and he certainly had the clearance to delve into my family as he could be the only one of my friends who actually knew my mother and my father. So Leo dug into old records and I was amazed all over again.
He went through three sets of census records for my dad's family. In the first round, his parents and my grandparents listed their birthplace as Russia, which was news to me. Ten years later, they filled it out again and listed Poland. One more decade and the US census records reveal that my grandmother and grandfather were hailing from Germany. Cirque De Soleil moves around less.
Leo uncovered the names of the ships that transported both my grandfather and grandmother to this country. Grandpa's occupations were changing as much as his birthplace. He went from streetcar conductor to bartender to an employee at the Borden's Milk plant. The only consistency was Grandma's occupation...Housewife.
We also uncovered the military records of my dad and his three brothers. This led me to the name of his one brother whose name I now bear. It is unsettling to see your name on a list with the letters "KIA" next to them. That's not the car, gang.
So, on my father's side, there really is a wealth of details. This makes the lack of such on my mother's end even more disconcerting. What do I do now? Start contacting those potential third to sixth cousins one by one. That reeks of potential restraining orders. I'd have an easier time being Harvey Weinstein's press agent.
I may never know anything more about my mother's parents and I will just have to get used to that. Or not.
As I think about those 1200 "cousins" on that computer list, I realize that I do have six first cousins that I actually know about. Four on my dad's side and two on my mom's side. Of that group, I still communicate with two, barely communicate with two more, and the two maternal ones have disappeared like Kevin Spacey. Oddly enough, I shared the recent findings from Leo on-line with one of the "barely communicate" cousins via e-mail. I had not really spoken with him at length since we put my father in the ground almost 27 years ago. But the result of that was a rather protracted and pleasant e-mail exchange.
"Why don't you call us next time you're in NY?"
I've heard that before. I've never really done it before. Maybe now I will. As I think about reaching out to cousins I don't know, perhaps I should just be content with reconnecting to ones I do know about.
But, still...the name "Morgan" haunts me. And probably always will. You see how I keep coming back to that?
Dinner last night: Rigatoni with pancetta at E Baldi.
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