Surprise. Surprise. Surprise. Pt. 1

Not long before my mother went on to her eternal reward, she said something I’d never heard her say.

“When I was a teenager, people would sometimes ask me if I was part black.”

And to be sure, I was less surprised than I may ‘have let on.’ For you see, my grandmother, her three sisters, and three brothers were dark complexioned. A brief perusal of an old photo of the four sisters leaves little doubt that an ethnic ad mixture existed among them. And the celluloid likenesses of my mother indicated much the same thing.

Well before my mother shared this little tidbit with me, and at her request, I ordered a DNA test which arrived a scant few days before her death. Given the fragile nature of my mother’s health, as soon as the kit arrived I immediately transported it to the skilled nursing center in which she resided. 

During the two years she’d been here, I had made a practice of taking her home for lunch once a week. However, over the course of the past few months she’d been bedbound, and by this point her little world was limited to four walls, a fellow patient, frequent visitors, and the nursing home staff. She’d tolerated the weekly excursion the previous Christmas; when her sisters and nieces from Georgia came for a visit. Little could I have known it would be the final time she would see her beloved home.

I will always remember the difficulty surrounding the administration of my mother’s DNA test. For as many of you know, (and if you don’t, I’m on the verge of enlightening you) many of the tests relating to the identification of one’s family lineage involve the donation of a couple of teaspoons of saliva. I can assure you, it was all my mother could do to summon up enough of that ingredient. 

As the minutes ticked by I thought, “Well, there are three possible outcomes to the endeavor of which I am presently engaged. 1. My mother will either fail to contribute enough of the liquid offering, and she will have forfeited the $200 cost of the DNA kit (or) 2. The rate of evaporation will exceed the rate of contribution, and in the meantime, we will both grow old and die (or) 3. Hope against hope, sometime before the sun sets on the horizon, we will be able to celebrate a successful conclusion to our quest.

And somewhat amazingly, the opaque liquid in the collection tube continued to rise; until my mother just managed to ‘cross the line.’

I had ordered and self-administered a DNA test from a different company, and had long since received my own results; which for the most part were a foregone conclusion. 

Great Britain and Ireland - 70%. Germany. France. Scandinavia - 17%. The Caucasus (to include Israel) – 1%. And then there were a few surprises. Spain - 3%. Italy/Greece - 3%. Eastern Europe – 1%. North (Saharan) Africa - 1%. 

However, the oral tradition which had, by the way, been promulgated within my maternal line that somewhere in our ancient past a Native American ancestor lived and breathed and moved …could not be substantiated.

(To be continued)


 By William McDonald, PhD. From (Mc)Donald's Daily Diary. Vol. 41. Copyright pending

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