Trace Your Family Tree

Your Family Tree

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^{Have you ever wanted to send in your saliva and see where you actually came from? I have thought about this on numerous occasions. Actually, doing it is something I haven't done. What am I waiting for, maybe Christmas. Who knows, do I really want to know? Or is this just a passing fancy, something thought of but not actually followed through?} 

I am Me

My skin color is not lily white so who knows what I am. I am thinking a little bit of this and a little bit of that. There are different organizations who will assist me if I ever do decide this is the right thing for me to do. Thinking of it kind of scares me a little bit, just because. Not knowing my whole life hasn't done me any harm so why do I insist on kicking the hornet's nest? Is it curiosity? Do I have a need to know? Will this make me a different person than I am at this exact moment? No to all the above. Maybe it is the way I am wired. With a need to know things. Things that are maybe better off not being revealed in any way shape or form.

Family of Strangers

My siblings and I are not close. My parents weren't exactly parents. The only one I keep in contact with is my sister Tammy. I send her my stories before I publish them, and she corrects them. Grammar errors, punctuation errors, what have you. She is on top of it. So, thank you very much Tammy. What would I do without her? Having the itch to write things down doesn’t mean there will not be errors. Especially with my writing. Sometimes I'm tired when I write. Tammy will text me back with a “What is this?”  question. I answer with a, “That is a good question.” After writing a story, many times I will send it off to her without rereading it. Not a good thing to do. But after all I am only human.

What Happens Next

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What do I do with the results after I get them back? DNA results my whole family may want to know. Do I shoot the results off to each and every one of them? I am not on speaking terms with at least one. Do I send it to her anyway? Will she care, or just delete it without looking because she sees it is from me? Your guess is as good as mine. I guess I will find out if I ever do want to find out what I am made of.

What makes me the person I am? It doesn’t have anything to do with my DNA results. It is called life. The ups and down of it, the ins and outs of it. The struggle and achievements. All these things make me the person I am today. Not perfect, but not the worst person in the world either. So looking at the results of who I am inside me will not change the way I am on the outside.

Where Do We Come From

I remember as a child asking my mother what our history was. Where do we come from? Why is my skin color different from others in our family? Some lighter skinned, some darker. Where does it come from? I may as well have been talking to the wall. Because I got no information whatsoever from her. I never went to my father with the same question. We often were not on speaking terms.

That leaves me with only one option. To send in my saliva. Both parents are gone now so there is no going back and trying to retrieve information from them. Asking distant relatives doesn’t appeal to me. Who knows what kind of answers I’d get from them. Or if they would even agree to answer questions about our family tree.

Doesn’t everyone have to do a family tree when they are in school? It seems as if I remember something about that assignment. I'm quite sure if I turned one in it only had one branch on it. Because I would not have gotten any parental help from either parent.

It's In My Head

To say it intrigues me is an understatement. Once an idea burrows its way into my head, it stays there. There is no removing it. Sooner or later, in this case later I will follow through. Will my world be forever changed by the results? I cannot comment on that as I do not know. I’m thinking it will not be something that will be earth shaking, rather something that I’ve had in my head already knowing. I’ve heard off hand comments throughout my life. Never paying attention because perhaps I was not ready to know. Maybe at this point in my life I'm ready to face it. Head on, because with old age comes the knowledge and wisdom of not giving a s**t about a lot of things. Mostly because they do not matter in the long run. It takes most of your life to get to this point, that is the sad thing. Too bad we do not have that wisdom when we are young. It could have altered our life in many ways. But in the end that is what makes us stronger, the mistakes we have made. It is what makes us, us.

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Tune in, I’ll keep you posted if I do eventually follow through. Touche’ to me.

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