My two cents about the popular DNA tests on the market
today; only use them if you are mentally prepared to accept whatever family secrets
they reveal. Seriously, they can open up
some dark closets.
All my life, I have lived knowing that I am one hundred
percent Polish / Eastern European, that was an identity I was proud of and grew
up believing. I’m not going to say I was
raised Polish, I don’t speak the language and don’t know much about the
culture. I had a very heavy Hispanic
influence during most of my childhood and teen years. But I was proud of my heritage and spent a
lot of time researching what I could about my family. I learned a lot over the years, but also hit
some dead ends, mostly because of the scarcity of records in Poland due to the
Great Wars.
I thought I would take a DNA test, it was on sale and I
thought it would be fun. I chose the
National Geographic GENO 2.0 project.
The data would benefit an actual scientific project and it offered more
on the deep ancestry than the recent ancestry.
I knew I was Eastern European, but I wanted to learn more on the deeper
aspects, migration patterns and deeper roots.
I knew it would come back Polish, but where did we come from before
Eastern Europe.
I was fifty percent right.
The results came back, and with them, a huge shock. I was Eastern European, but only fifty
percent. What came next was the shocker,
nineteen percent Native American was what hit my eyes. Basically, it translated to twenty-five
percent Spanish (Western and Southern European) and 25 percent Indigenous North
and South American. Immediately, I
started thinking about my step father who was around since I was a baby. My mom and “dad” divorced somewhere in 1969
and she remarried in 1971. Now I knew he
was around early on, I saw pictures of my mom and step-dad from 1969, but the
kicker was, I looked nothing like him or anyone in his family. So I turned to him after a couple months of
mulling about on the results.
His response was even more of a shock. Your DNA is probably right, but it wasn’t me. It seems he didn’t meet my mom until December
of 1968, I was born in May of 69, the math doesn’t add up. He did tell me that my mom was seeing another
Colombian guy prior to meeting him, who was not such a nice guy, but from a
good family. He told me his name, but
that was a dead end. The man who I
thought was my dad, I always knew, was an alcoholic and he owned a bar which he
spent a lot of time running. That is
what eventually killed him, but everyone always told me how much I looked like
him, same hair, similar build, same looks.
So this is intriguing. I turned
to my last surviving Uncle.
He was not able to shed much light on the subject, whatever
my mom was doing, she was very skilled
at keeping it hidden. But, he did say,
it was the 60s! Yeah, I get that and I don’t
fault my mom for any of it, she was in a bad marriage and needed something
else. What I was upset with was she knew
that she was doing that, but never thought to mention any of it to me as an
adult. I suppose because I looked so
much like my “father”. So, I started
looking at error rates of DNA testing and found that there is a high error
rate, but for medical condition testing.
In the realm of ancestry testing, there are variations in test results,
meaning percentages of one region over another moving by several percentage
points based on that company’s foundational data, but not a lot recorded about
errors where there are massive regional shifts, say from Eastern Europe to the
New World. So all the people telling me
my results have to be wrong, sadly, I cant say that is the case.
In the end, some deep secrets were revealed about my mom and
my genetic make-up. I learned that I am
half Hispanic and I have a name of someone who might have been my genetic
father, though any more than that, I will never know. At 49 years old, most people in my life who
knew anything have since passed.
The reality, my DNA doesn’t change who I am. I am the product of my life’s
experiences. I didn’t know much of my
Mom’s family, the Kijanka’s. Most died
when I was young and the rest moved away.
Her mom passed when I was in High School and I hand not seen my Grand
Mother for years by that time because we moved to Arizona and she was in
Michigan. Much of the influences in my younger
life were my Aunt (“father’s” sister), my mom and my step father. So I had a huge Hispanic influence in my
younger years anyway, but my Aunt ensured I knew I was Polish too. When we moved to Arizona and my mom and
step-dad divorced, My best friend’s family, a wonderful Mexican family, was a
big influence in my life. Again, a heavy
Hispanic influence as well.
I never learned Polish, I never mastered Spanish and I think
I speak English fairly well and can get around in Japanese too, since I lived
there for several years – the Asian Influence.
That is another story. After
spending my life thinking I was one thing, it turns out I am something else,
which is the point I wanted to make.
Don’t take one of those tests, unless you are absolutely
certain you are mentally prepared to accept the dark secrets which they may
reveal. I was certain I was 100 percent
eastern European, guess what … I am not.
That result drove me to some deeper secrets, which in the end, I wish I never
learned.
Overall, I am an American.
Born here, raised here and the genetics, a melting pot of influence, confirms
that I am part of the Human Brotherhood. I am still me, nothing changes that. A DNA test doesn’t define who I am and it
opens up some interesting learning experiences, like I need to research which
casino I can apply to get stock in and I get to check the Hispanic box on
applications (ha ha … im being sarcastic, laugh). I can live with the deep secrets revealed,
but it took 4 months to process and come to terms with. Keep all that in mind before spitting in that
test tube.
