What kind of tree cannot be broken, chopped, sawed, burned or destroyed by anything mankind tries to throw at it? It’s a tree that people can pretend to cut limbs off of, but the truth is they can’t change what nature has already decreed. I’m talking about a family tree. When you’re born, you have genes from both sides of the family. People on one side of the family might say, “Oh, he/she looks just like their mom.” And people on the other side of the family might say, “Oh, he/she looks just like their dad.” And they could both be right. Over the years, some of my family members and I came to the conclusion that what people tend to pick out in features is what they are familiar with, so it’s more of what they see. No matter which side of the family you take after, your genes are your genes, and no one can change that. They can cut you out of inheritances, uninvite you to participate in family functions, erase your face off the paper drawing of your family tree, but they can’t change the DNA that is uniquely yours – and in so many ways, theirs as well.
How strong is that DNA? One of my brothers moves like my dad. One of my brothers did things growing up that my dad did. More than one of my four brothers looks like my dad when they turn their head just right or do something that seems vaguely familiar. They were aged five and under when he died (the youngest was only one years old) and would not have remembered certain things that our dad did that they also did as teens and adults. When at our mother’s house, myself and most of my sisters have answered her phone over the years, and after saying hello we hear the person on the other end start rambling on as if we are our mother. That’s six daughters who sound enough like our mother that people don’t know we aren’t her on the phone. (I’m sorry to say I never got to hear anything really interesting in the seconds before managing to interrupt the person talking to tell them they were not speaking to her, but to a daughter.) Going back another generation, the older one of my sisters gets, the more often she makes me think of our grandmother and it’s very endearing to me. My mother’s face reminds me of her father…and sometimes her mother. Such examples go on and on in all our families. The genes tell the tales of the ancestors. Keeps the memories of them alive.
People often research their family trees these days, television shows have been created on family members being reunited with lost members and so forth, and many of these people have discovered some really interesting things. Of course, when you start digging into your family lines, be prepared to find some unsettling details you never knew about. I have two friends who found there were illegitimate members – one fathered by an uncle (she had to calculate through her uncles to figure out which one was the likely culprit – I mean, how do you go to them and ask which one had a child from another woman while married to your aunt?), and the other one was fathered by a grandfather. That’s only one or two generations away from them – and in both instances, the unknown half-relative wanted to get acquainted with the one who had been searching. How would you respond? Would you want to meet them, be family to them, despite the circumstances? After all, it wasn’t their fault.
When my daughter climbed her way through generation after generation of all her family trees (father’s side, mother’s side – including as many grandparent segments as far back as she could climb), she discovered several, shall we say quirky, things, including two entirely separate families showing up at a particular ancestor’s funeral… (I have to leave you hanging on this one, because that’s I’ll I know. I absolutely have to get the rest of this story!!)
And then, if you go further back, you might just find out there was a murderer in your family who was sent overseas to America as their punishment. Yes, one of my friends – half shocked, half laughingly – discovered this. {TANGENT ALERT!!!} It was a common practice for a while back in the 1700’s for Great Britain to send their criminals to the colonies as indentured servants to work off their time. They were pardoned after their time was served, but usually didn’t have the means to return to their home and families. The plus was that the seven or fourteen years you served, depending on the severity of your crime, was much better than capital punishment (death). You may never see your family again, but you might survive to make a new one after you were freed – or cause more mischief in your new country, which also happened. It’s been estimated that over 50,000 convicts (men, women and children) were transported to the American colonies, primarily to Maryland and Virginia, and sold to the highest bidder. During this time, more than half of all (white) immigrants to New England were indentured. By the American Revolutionary War (1775), only 2 to 3 percent of the labor force was indentured. Still, I wonder which side the 2-3 percent fought on during that war – for their Mother Country or against that country who had sent them from their family? And did they have a choice of which side to fight for or were they forced by their “owners” (they were essentially temporary slaves) to fight on the side they didn’t want to support? Or maybe they didn’t believe in fighting on either side – as many have had to do when forced to serve for a cause they would rather not fight for. Kill for. I sometimes think these rather worthless things. [Tangent over.]
Then there’s the second family thing. When your parent leaves the family, and he/she goes on to have another family in another city about 100 miles away, and you happen to be pumping gas one day as an adult over the age of 60 and start chatting with the guy whose pumping gas across from you and you find out he’s your half-brother…how would you react? Again, it’s not that person’s fault he was born, that his parent left the first family behind…I can’t imagine how he must have felt. Did he know what his parent had done? Definitely, not his fault. What would you do? Be rude and walk away, say “good day” and move on because it is too painful to contemplate getting to know this person, or stay in contact as this person is a half-sibling?
What got me thinking about our DNA heritage was when my Aunt contacted me about a bunch of items of her parents – china and whatnot – that she was letting go of and asked if I wanted any. I took the lot and shared it with my siblings and a few second-generation members as well. I was not surprised that the majority of my siblings took something to remember our grandparents by even though we’ve all collected plenty of ornamental things over the years. The love that we all have for our grandma and grandpa is heartfelt, regardless of the fact that they had been my dad’s foster parents rather than blood parents. Because he had been a baby when his father had died and his mother left, this had been his family growing up, so they also are family to us. Blood is not always thicker than water; it’s the time, energy and love that counts (stepparents and stepchildren will know what I’m talking about). These are the family members we get to choose.
If you think about it, we all make decisions that will ultimately alter our family dynamics and affect the whole tree. Whether we marry for a lifetime, divorce/widowed and remarry, never marry/partner, or have an affair/connection that brings forth a child, each dictate how our part of the tree will look. And while family can be created and constructed from many different people: steps, adoption, closest friends, church people, sports, work, or civic group members – and foster families, you can’t choose your blood family. They are who they are. You don’t have to like your blood family or choose to hang around with them, etc., but some of those similarities in your genes could well bind you together, especially if you are raised in the same household. The old saying, “you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family” is scientifically or medically true, but even though there are plenty of disagreements and always some dysfunction in families (of all sorts), they can be a real blessing – especially if you are a blessing to them. Be a blessing. Don’t worry about the response. Just be a blessing and build the emotional and spiritual DNA in your family. Whether or not they share the same physical DNA.
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