NPEs

“Dad had the same color green eyes,” my brother said as he slid into the booth across from me. I was meeting him and my sister for the first time, and as much as we were trying to keep things light, it was awkward. I took a deep breath, willing myself to relax, and smoothed the navy sundress I chose to wear for an occasion that was casual yet monumental. I smiled and looked at my new brother’s face—the face of a stranger—yet one in which I saw a whisper of familiarity. Squirming in my chair, I realized I could be talking about my own face, one I barely recognized anymore. How did I get here? I’d taken a DNA test for fun, never imagining it would change my life and my identity. Finding out that my dad—the man I grew up thinking was responsible for my thick hair and long skinny feet—was not my biological father rocked my world and led me on a journey of tearing myself apart and putting myself back together again. Stumbling across the word ecotone recently, I learned it is the area between two biological places with characteristics of each. A marsh, the boundary between water and land, is an ecotone. Like a marsh that is part this and part that, I too, am an ecotone. Finding out the truth of my paternity was a gradual process; I was like an archaeologist painstakingly cleaning layers of dirt from an artifact. First were the DNA test results with unexpected heritage. This led to examining my existing family tree, each climb up it leading to dead ends. DNA testing companies notify you when your DNA matches someone else in their databases, and as I began to receive these notifications, the names of the matches were foreign. I realized something was out of place, and my gut was telling me it was me. I began receiving messages from my DNA family, each one kind and inquiring, as they too were trying to make me fit. Eventually, suspicions turned to proof, and my biology shifted. I was out of place. Unlike tectonic shifts that move the Earth’s plates either toward or away from each other, finding out that I biologically belong somewhere else, simultaneously moved me away from one place and toward another.

“My mother believed in me, and because of that, I believe in myself. And I really can’t think of a greater gift that a parent can give their child.” Those words ended my eulogy, so I stepped down from the podium and solemnly returned to my seat. Later, as I mingled among the crowd, quite a few people praised my remarks.  While kind words are standard at funerals, their comments seemed heartfelt and genuine. I thanked them, adding that praising my mother came easy because of my strong, life-long bond with her, a bond that would be her legacy forever. “Forever” lasted 16 years, ending the day my mother reached up from the grave and wrought emotional ruin on the living, particularly me. I distinctly remember being 11-years-old when my dad heartlessly embarrassed me at a school event. Being at odds with my father was commonplace during my childhood and peaked during my teenage and college years, after which I largely eliminated him from my life. As a child, I recognized fundamental differences between myself and my dad. I looked nothing like him. He was athletic, I was not. I excelled academically, whereas he had struggled as a student. The list goes on. When I returned home after the embarrassing school event with tears in my eyes, I bluntly howled at my mom, “How is he my dad when I’m nothing like him and he’s nothing like me?” “He’s your dad, just try to forgive him,” she replied. Over the next quarter century, I asked her some version of that question on dozens of occasions, sometimes in a calm voice, sometimes in harsh tones through gritted teeth. She always responded with some version of that same answer. For some reason I just accepted her words rather than taking my question toward a logical conclusion, probably because I never realized that trusting your mother was fraught with risk.

I recently visited Earth Sanctuary—a perfect place to reconnect with my soul and nature. There I found peaceful ponds, sacred stone circles, a labyrinth, Tibetan prayer and Native American medicine wheels—all nestled in a protected forest.  Perhaps, I thought, it would also be the perfect place to connect with my recently discovered BioDad, Michael,  who passed in 2015. After my NPE (not parent expected) discovery and after having found his family, I understood my gravitation toward all things Native American. Visiting this land, with its sacred Native spaces, had me hopeful and happy for a soulful adventure. Leaves crunched beneath my feet on the winding path. Deep breaths and deliberate steps… inhale… crunch, crunch, crunch … Exhale… crunch, crunch, crunch. Wearing low-tread sneakers instead of hiking boots was an intentional choice that forced a more mindful gait on the muddy, slightly hilly trail.  At each activity location, I said a prayer, left an offering, and felt lighter. The Native American prayer place surprised me. It felt familiar, though I’d never been to or seen one. Intuitively, I peeled off my sneakers and socks, then stepped barefoot on the flat rock at the pond’s edge. With hands outstretched and palms up, I closed my eyes and thought of Michael.  In my mind’s eye, I had a strong vision of the man whose genes created me. His face was clear from photographs shared by his family. The stories they’d generously shared of his struggles and joy created both peace and sorrow. One deep breath and a tear ran down my cheek. Two breaths, another tear.

I used to think in paragraphs, sort of dream in sentences, always in love with the way words work. In high school, Mr. Riley taught us how to string sounds together regardless of meaning. I fell in love with lilting Ls, rolling Rs, phrases like “cinnamon vanilla turquoise.” I loved speeches in the movies, and in real life, where every word packs a punch to create sentences that change the world. Annie Dillard, Joan Didion, Julio Cotazar, and David Foster Wallace served as totems while I prayed for guidance at the keyboard. Essays were a voice for me, a way to process events, both traumatic or hilarious, and create a record of my life in a world where I often felt unheard. Screenplays were a way to create images and dialogue where written words were not enough. I was getting support from people I admired. I was getting paid for pieces about all the stupid thoughts in my head about the events in my life. People asked about a book. I was looped into pitch meetings. It wasn’t always positive; hearing “no” always stung, but it meant I was putting myself out there. And then a man called my husband, and my husband called me, to say: my whole life has been a lie. There was a convoluted story about a group of Christians in the late 1970s, betrayal, secrets, heartbreak. The man explained he was sure that I was his daughter; the man who raised me was, in fact, not my father. As one might imagine, drama ensued. Everything stopped inside me. Paragraphs and word play were replaced with whispered phone calls, difficult emails, awkward conversations, countless questions, a million tears. Try as I might, I don’t feel like there is anything to write about because everything to write about is loaded. Secrets and shame are the throughline. My lost identity is the lede. My book proposal for a memoir about the relationship between mothers and daughters? Null and void. My mom said please don’t put this on Facebook. My dad said please just wait before putting pen to paper about any of this.

My dad, is my dad. I said what I said. You can’t change my mind. My therapist has tried to—or at least to change the words I use to describe my father. Over my lifetime, I’ve called my father daddy. I’ve referred to him as my father or Steve. But he was my dad. My dad was an NPE. He grew up with a drunk mother and without ever knowing his own biological father. He bore his stepfather’s surname and wasn’t welcome at the stepfather’s family homestead over the holidays, unlike his two half brothers—his stepfather’s sons. I find it interesting that my dad referred to his own missing biological parent as his “sire.” He seemed to be a stickler for labels and calling things by their proper names, although I suspect, in his case, his choice of label was heavily peppered with anger and resentment. He never knew his father. Or why he left. Or why none of his father’s family sought him out. But my dad—he was my dad until I was almost four years old. But then he abandoned me. My therapist thinks that because he left me, and because he never resurfaced, his title should be nothing more than sperm donor. She thinks by calling him dad I give him too much power and influence over me. There is language in NPE, adoption, and donor conceived circles to describe family members and relationship roles, but it’s complicated. Words and roles—like dad, father, donor—just aren’t simply defined anymore, and I’ve had trouble unpacking the roles and titles in my life.

I radiate a warm glow in the photo—a farmer’s tan from hours of playing outside in the Texas sun. A neighborhood friend had documented the moment via disposable camera. It’s hard to remember what occasion we were marking—an eleventh birthday party, perhaps, or the end of the school year. Whatever the event, my smile is wide, genuine, and my brown eyes are scrunched into happy almonds in a heart-shaped face. This photo never meant anything special to me then, but now I wonder how could I—how could my family –not have questioned my true heritage? I’m 34 years old and I’ve just discovered by way of an at-home DNA test that I’m 25% Japanese. This revelation launches me into a frenetic investigation— activating an old Ancestry.com account, sending cryptic text messages to my parents and brother, and diagramming possibilities on the back of a napkin. After all, my maiden name sounds like a type of sausage and Mom is a freckled redhead, clearly the offspring of Scottish-Irish farmers. Growing up, I’d never been questioned about my whiteness, although there were comments that I tended to tan in a more olive tone than did my younger brother. Since we played outside for 6 hours a day in the southern heat, no one thought twice about it. After hours of frantic speculation, I get a text message from my mother, with whom I have shared the surprising ethnic breakdown. She says, “Can I call you later?” It’s on this phone call that she shares the truth—there was an ex-boyfriend who was half-Japanese just before she and Dad got married. She’s Googled him to find an obituary from 2012. He’s survived by a brother, a wife, and his Japanese mother. Mom sends me the link. The need for information consumes me. Through the names and locations in the obituary, I

I was born William Joseph Olson in Sioux Falls, South Dakota on September 27, 1979, when my mother was only 20 years old. Because she’d been intimate with two men, she couldn’t be certain who my father was. One of the men, Brent, had been her senior prom date, and the other, Howard, was eleven years older—a man she saw when he was home on leave from the military. Her father despised him, and though she prayed he wasn’t my father, she suspected he was, thinking she remembered the night I was conceived: Christmas Eve 1978. Howard had already been married and had a daughter, but my mother believed he was divorced at the time she became involved with him. A dental technician, he was the older brother of my mother’s close friend Alice from high school. During his visits to Lennox, he’d take my mom out on dates, usually to the races. When he wasn’t drunk, my mother says, he was a great guy. When it came time for my mother to fill in the birth certificate, she chose to leave the father’s name blank. That decision profoundly influenced my life and my self image. As a poor single woman, she needed state assistance, but the state required her to provide the name of the person who might be my father. She named Brent, but a DNA test ruled him out. That could only mean the man my grandfather despised—Howard—was my father.

Dear Dad, In my dream house, you are there. You were there all along. Always. You carried me on your shoulders and taught me how to ride a bike, how to swim, how to fish. You told bedtime stories and silly dad jokes to make me laugh. You let me hand you tools when you fixed the car. You took my teeth from under my pillow when you thought I was sleeping and replaced them with crisp dollar bills. You smiled, standing there in your best suit as I came down the stairs in my fancy dress and Mary Janes, ready for my first father-daughter dance at school. I made you pictures that you hung on the wall at your office and bought you ties for Father’s Day. I made your coffee just the way you like on Sunday mornings and brought you iced tea when you mowed the lawn. We watched old movies and munched popcorn. You helped me with my math homework and comforted me when my first crush broke my heart. We went out for ice cream. You taught me how to drive stick shift. You cheered at my graduations, and teared up as you walked me down the aisle on my wedding day. We danced to Daddy’s Little Girl at the reception. When I found out I was pregnant, you were thrilled. You helped my husband paint the baby’s room and put the crib together. You paced the hallway when I was in labor and you were the first person in the room to kiss your grandchild. You came over so I could take a shower since the baby kept me up all night. I found you, with your first granddaughter nuzzled up on your chest, both of you sound asleep on the sofa. You were there for every holiday. Every birthday. Every grandparents day at school, choral concert, dance recital.

Two years ago, I discovered a birth father I knew nothing about after taking a 23andMe DNA test for fun. I hired a genealogist to locate him and, against her expert advice, went to his home to meet him when he ignored my phone calls. This man’s interest eventually overcame his denial and we began a relationship as father and daughter. With him came aunts, an uncle, cousins, a brother, sister-in-law, and a nephew—instant family! As I met each of them, in turn they welcomed me with the typical Scottish declaration, “Welcome to the clan!” 23andMe had reported I was 50% Scottish, and now it was official. With a major life cycle transition, there’s usually an official event: a wedding shower, baby shower, baby naming, a birthday party—a welcoming of a new stage or a new person, with all the accompanying pomp and circumstance of tradition. Interestingly, my official welcome to the clan occurred over the Jewish New Year— Rosh Hashana—also a time of new beginnings and discovery. The very nature of a new year is a beginning, albeit symbolic if not psychological. When we have a difficult year, we can’t wait for the official ending and symbolic beginning of the next revolution around the sun—almost as if beginning again acts as a type of psychological barrier, representing an end to the difficulty. Yin and yang depict the necessary opposites of light and dark forces inherent to all aspects of creation—the seasons, cycle of life, to name a few. A new beginning occurs on the heels of something ending. When I took the 23andMe test, I had no way of knowing the loss at 22 years old of the father who raised me would be the ending to this new beginning.

It’s been about 18 months since I discovered the man on my birth certificate was not my biological father and I joined the growing tribe of people who are lucky enough to call themselves NPEs, or Not Parent Expected. I thought once I discovered who my biological father was and had time to process my feelings, I’d be able to put this NPE nonsense behind me. It took me about six months to be sure I’d found the man behind half of my genes. I gave myself another six months to let it all sink in and then, I hoped, everything would return to how it was before my DNA surprise. Great, I thought, let’s wrap that rollercoaster ride up, stuff it in a box, put it in the deep recesses of my mind, and slam the door shut. I processed. It was time to move on. But I couldn’t. When my best friend died of cancer 15 years ago, I was eventually able to work through my grief. She’s still in my heart, and sometimes something reminds me of her and I smile. Smile! With my NPE status, I compressed all of those emotions and tried to consider myself “over it.” But it wasn’t working, I still couldn’t smile about it. In DNA NPE Friends, an NPE Facebook support group, a fellow NPE asked everyone to list just one word to describe how they feel about their NPE experience at that moment. The emotions you feel when you discover you’re an NPE are intense and change over time. I tallied the more than 600 responses and generated a word cloud. What struck me most was the number one feeling—lost. As soon as you realize you’re an NPE, you lose your tether to the world. To the family you grew up with. To the person you were just moments before. You are adrift. You are confused and overwhelmed. I remember reading a description of an experience in the “Twilight Series” that reminds me of what it’s like to discover you’re an NPE. In “Breaking Dawn,” Jacob describes what it feels like to “imprint” on Bella and Edward’s baby daughter Renesmee the first time he sees her. “Everything that made me who I was—my love for [Bella], my love for my father, my loyalty to my pack, the love for my other brothers, my hatred for my enemies, my home, my name, my self—disconnected from me in that second—snip, snip, snip—and floated up into space.”