Victorian dresses. Hats with large brims. Men with 3 piece suits and handlebar mustaches. Lots of stopwatches. The Statue of Liberty. Valets as placeholders in an Ellis Island line. This is how I imagined my ancestors arriving in the United States. It’s a very “the china had never been used” Titanic sort of imagining, which makes zero sense, seeing that my ancestors, as far as I can tell, would’ve been in the cargo area with their farm animals. I know more about the German and the French relatives than any others, since those are the genealogy arms that have best been painstakingly researched and recorded by each of my parents’ cousins. If you’re the family genealogist, you’re akin to royalty at family reunions. They may as well carry you in on a Cleopatra chair and feed you peeled grapes. People parade their children by and say things like, “Cousin Betty, look! Doesn’t James Jr. have the Stilwell ears?” The genealogist has the pictures you’ve never seen, can tell the stories you’ve never heard, and provides a tether to the past. Recently, my tether snapped like an old, rotten rubber band. I’m not who I thought I was and it applies to so many of my life’s avenues.
Several years ago, my husband gifted me with a DNA test kit for Christmas. I was so excited! Which Indigenous American tribe(s) would show up strongest? I called my Stilwell cousins. “Cherokee,” they all said! Just you wait and see. 6 weeks later, I called them all back. I had zero native blood. Zero. Turns out, I was mostly British, a bit Welsh, with mere sprinkles of Scottish/Irish/ French/German. So many questions. What about the coworker that swore I looked exactly like her Puerto Rican aunt? What about my father’s inherited olive complexion? What about my BFF’s colleague from Iran who promised me I had Persian characteristics? Turns out, I’m mainly a British Isles girl, supposedly suitable for incredibly cold climates. My son had a similar experience with his DNA results. His father is from a documented Czech Republic family whose roots on both sides can be traced back to Prague. In fact, my children’s father was the first generation of that family to marry outside of the 100% Czech heritage. So, he’s 50% Eastern European/Czech, right? Yeah, welcome to Ancestry 101. That’s not how DNA works. He’s 37% EU with a liberal dousing of cool, exotic things like Ashkenazi Jewish and Neanderthal? Turns out DNA isn’t a collection of colored beads passed down to children in exact allotments. You get 50 red beads, Jane. You get 50 red beads, John. When parental heritage is passed on to children, chromosomal recombination does some incredible things. Mom’s minute Swedish DNA can get passed to one child, but to no subsequent siblings. So, while my son could never have been more than 50% Czech, he could, and was, gifted with more of my “stuff” than we realized. He is a beautiful man, but he is not who he thought he was. Hang in there. Dots will be connected, soon.
Recently, I got a new iPhone. With that came a purge of useless data and apps I never used. In this process, I noticed my old Ancestry app from that many moons ago DNA analysis. There were several messages within that app, just lying in wait for months. I opened up the message section. My DNA had updated? How is that even possible? Isn’t that technology carved into stone? Isn’t it so concrete that we can condemn serial killers? Turns out, that’s a yes, but a very fluid yes. As DNA testing becomes both more available and more popular, companies have greater numbers of DNA samples to compare and contrast against each other. This leads to recognition of new regions that will begin to appear, or increase in percentage, on profiles. This can also lead to some designations disappearing from results altogether. For instance, I had a negligible percentage (20ish %) of Irish/Scottish DNA in my original profile, with the bulk of my results grounded in Great Britain. Not so fast, Sherlock. In this latest results update, I’ve benefited from the augmented profile analyzation in this way: Scotland 37%, England 29%, Wales 25%, Ireland 5%, Norway 2%, Sweden 2%. I’m sorry, what? Turns out, I’m more Scottish than anything. Also, no one came through Ellis Island, nary a single ancestor. My peeps, on both sides, were North Carolina coast arrivers. Move over, Outlanders, there’s a new Haggis in town.
But, Dina, this is the most boring column of all time. Look, here’s what all of this is leading to. We’re only what we’re labeled as until we know more about who we truly are. And, even that is subject to change. It’s a very eye opening factoid that applies to a whole bunch of life lessons. I am who I am because I have always understood, psychologically, that it’s just the way things go. Phooey. If nothing else, 2020 has shown us that we can rewrite EVERYTHING if we’d like. If our DNA can evolve as we grow then so can our attitudes, so can our aptitudes, and so can our belief systems. Think of the changes you are capable of making, if you’d like to try. Maya Angelou once said, according to Oprah, “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” She also said, “When you know better, do better.” Here’s to doing better. Enlightenment is a beautiful thing. Cue caged birds singing.
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