Back at my parent’s house, after being picked up by my brother, and knowing my parents would be out-of-town for a few days, I decided to scour the house for clues.  My parents have a room they keep as a library/study room, in which I knew there were a few filing cabinets were important information is generally kept.  I figured I’d start there.

What was I looking for?  Any health records related to our birth, the fertility doctor my parents had seen, really just anything that could lend a clue as to what in the heck was going on.  While I didn’t know for certain what scenario had led to my DNA results, MOST signs pointed to being conceived via sperm donation.  That being the case, I had started to conduct some (light) research into donor conception, and found that most donations are associated with a particular donor number that is indicated on the sample’s vial, which is also referred to as a “vial number”.  This is also the same number that is frequently used in searches between donors and their progeny, as well as between donor conceived half-siblings, etc.

Did I feel weird or guilty about going through that room (and, let’s be serious, the house) with a fine toothed comb?  Yes, a bit, but ultimately not enough to make me feel that it wasn’t my right, or at the very least worth the risk.  At that point in time, my parents had, on several occasions, essentially denied that there was anything out of the ordinary about our paternity, and had been pretty clear about not really wanting to discuss it further.  Also, the most likely case scenario (sperm donor) meant that this central information to who we (triplets) are had been intentionally withheld from us for over thirty years.  When the two factors combined, I honestly wasn’t feeling a lot of trust, and yet I desperately wanted to know the truth.  I wasn’t willing to risk asking the question of my parents and having them possibly lie again before I had the chance to first find out what information I could–what if they decided to lie, then, knowing I might be looking, destroyed vital paperwork?  I know it may sound crazy, but to me, hiding something that ultimately was MINE, my truth, my history, ancestry, biology–(my own DNA!) felt just as crazy, and the possibility of having the truth sealed forever was just too much of a risk for me to bear.

So, needless to say, I left no. stone. unturned.

I found a lot of interesting things, but no fertility paperwork, and no vial number.  This was pretty damn disappointing.  Over the course of my search, I had uncovered paperwork from when my Dad had cancer (including a brochure about cancer treatments and sterility), files on my brothers and I from infancy to our first three years documenting our health and progress on various childhood milestones (the hospita where we were born had taken a special interest in us given that we were triplets, fairly rare in the early 80s, and had been born 6 weeks premature), and mounds of just random other shiz.  Importantly, though, I did discover DNA test packaging that my mother had ordered years ago that I have TOTALLY forgotten about!  It was National Geographic’s “GenoGraphic Project”–not something I had come across so far in my limited research, but maybe it would at least give me her ethnicity breakdown (which also wasn’t ENTIRELY showing up in my genetic profile…the German aspect in particular seemed to be randomly absent, so maybe this would help explain that side of the mystery).

After carefully putting everything else away, I took the kit packaging and paperwork up to my childhood bedroom and googled the test to see if it was still possible to see the results.

It was, although the test turned out to yield a very different type of result from AncestryDNA and FTDNA…these results went back thousands and thousands of years to more or less the dawn of our species and provided a much more general, macro-level view of mass migrations.  Essentially, it wasn’t what I was looking for, which was also a bit disappointing.

That said, at least now I had a starting point for whenever I’d have my conversation with my Mom–she, too, clearly has an inherent interest in knowing her ancestry and understanding her roots.  This was our common ground.  Surely she could understand the desire to know your own biological history, and wouldn’t deny me the right and empathy to also know my own?

While I had been searching, my brother was out of the house, either at work or visiting a friend in Philly.  Later that night, when he returned, we ordered a pizza for dinner from our childhood Mom-and-Pop-Shop, picked it up, and brought it back to the house.  After chatting for a bit about other things, I turned the conversation toward the Ancestry.com family tree research I had been doing, which I’d been asking him to help me with over the past couple of weeks.  He’s also a big-time family history/research nerd, and even had his own Ancestry.com account and family tree going several years before.  He just never had the DNA piece.

As we talked, I grew a pit in my stomach, again feeling so completely conflicted about whether or not I should tell him what I knew.  Would he be upset to know?  Would this shake his foundation, his understanding of who he was, like it did me?  Not everyone wants to trade that feeling for the truth.  Or, at least, when there’s a possibility for it to be a choice, most people don’t want that kind of decision made for them.  In my case, by taking this test in the first place, I knew that there was a *possibility* that I would find something out I wouldn’t want to know.  Yet, in the end, I knew the risk (albeit wrongly calculated to be a small one), and ordered the test.  Also, I’m the kind of person who would rather know the truth, even when that truth is hard.  While, at the end of the day, I wish that I had received different results, ones that confirmed my nuclear family (and maybe, as a bonus, tossed in a few other countries into the mix!), I’m in no way sorry that I now know more of my truth.  It’s part of who I am.  To me, it’s my right, and it’s also not anything to be ashamed of.  If this is to be my truth, I at least want my hands on as much of the ropes of the situation as is possible.  The option to find out the full story–my full story.

And who was I to hide this from my own brother, to deny him this option, this right, too?  Some may say that if he really wanted to know, he could have taken a test himself.  To them, I say, “that’s true…partially“.   He and my other triplet brother have had no REAL reason to question our parentage. We’d been told that my Dad is my Dad and my Mom is my Mom.  We had no reason to question this or seek out an alternative, more complicated truth.  However, I newly possessed a reason for HIM to finally question what we’d always thought to be true.  As triplets, being conceived at the same time meant that my seeking out and then knowing my DNA’s truth inherently resulted in my knowing THEIR truth for them as well. By revealing the reason for them to question (explaining my own results), I’d also inherently be revealing the answer of their own paternity.

Sure, I could wait and see if they ever came up with and felt the question strongly enough to raise it on their own, and for them to come across the kinds of DNA testing platforms that I already had the privilege of knowing about (I was a BioBehavioral Health major, after all!), but I also knew that, at our age, our donor wasn’t getting any younger.  If they ever did want to pursue looking for and even connecting with this man, every day that I waited to tell the truth was another day that I’d have stolen from them.  That was time that could never be given back, a wrong that could never be righted.  Time to potentially find and build relationships with additional siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins.  If that WAS something they would have wanted, there was a time limit on that equation that just didn’t apply to the alternative.  Knowing, especially, that James had already asked my parents years ago about whether or not we had a different biological father–that he HAD asked that question, I knew that I couldn’t rightfully withhold this information from him–it wasn’t only mine to keep.  It belonged to each of them as much as it belonged to me.

This, of course, didn’t make it much easier to bring up to him–it certainly didn’t ease the guilt I felt toward my Dad.  My biggest fear, aside from potentially hurting my brother, was the possibility that he would reject our father as a result.  I wanted to protect my Dad from that possible outcome.  As much as I knew that, for myself, (and for them, in my mind), that knowing this new truth would never and COULD never replace my father–the man who raised us and, just more than that…in every way would always be our father–etched into the universe–I couldn’t predict how my brothers would feel, especially given their sometimes more tumultuous relationship with him.  God, just thinking about it again kills me.

But I also knew in my heart (my intuition is pretty strong) that while my brother would likely be just as curious as I naturally am about our “bonus” biological family, he would never forsake my father; the space in our heart for “Dad” had always been and will always be slated “occupied”.  Equally strongly I knew that my brother deserved to know the truth.

At this point, I don’t even remember *exactly* how I brought it up, but I knew that he already had the login information to my Ancestry account, which was linked to my AncestryDNA account.  This being the case, eventually he would see the truth on his own…and that wasn’t the right way for him to find out.  So, I asked him to tell me again about the time when he was sick and had asked Mom and Dad about whether or not Dad was our biological father.  He told me the story, from his perspective.  (Interestingly enough, it was a very different version than what my parents had told me at the time…but I guess every truth is filtered.)  I asked him if he ever still wonders about that, and he said that he did.  “Well…”, I said, and he replied “Why, did you find something out?”

I made him promise to keep what I was about to tell him between him and I for now, until we figured out what to do.  Then I told him what I knew.

Thankfully, from everything that I could tell, he took it really well–it was actually a surprisingly chill conversation , all things considered.  I think it was also a bit vindicating for him, too, to learn that his instinct in asking the question hadn’t been wrong.  I then told him about my fears in telling him, and how I feared how he would feel towards our Dad, and he confirmed that this doesn’t change who our DAD ultimately is.  DNA is no match for love.  In that moment, I was unbelievably relieved to finally have someone in the boat with me again, and to not have to keep a secret from him that was just as much his as it was mine.  We didn’t know how or when to tell our brother, (we’ll call him “Adam”), but I did tell James that I was planning on talking to Mom and Dad first, probably sometime that week while I was home.  I couldn’t continue to keep that closet locked any longer.

He agreed.

Several days had passed since I revealed the truth to my brother, but I still hadn’t spoken to my parents about it.  I mean, is there really a natural way to bring something like this up?  Like, “Hey, Mom and Dad, so…what’s up with the whole “Dad not being our biological father” thing?”  Hard to imagine that going smoothly. Granted, I was also just being a little bit chickenshit, and still just as scared as I was before that they might not tell me the truth.  That they would be offended.  That I would hurt them.  That they would hurt me.

After talking about it with a few friends, I decided that I would try to bring it up with my Mom first.  It seemed (to me) that she might not be as fearful of the question, since the question wasn’t directly about her–she was still clearly my biological parent.  I knew she would never have cheated on my father (as much as a reasonable person could ever know–there were things about her past that would have made infidelity on her part incredibly unlikely), so it’s not like I would be bringing up my inquiry in a way that would hint at that and make her feel defensive.  It seemed like she would have less to risk by finally telling me the truth.  Indeed, I was a woman without a plan, but figured I’d play it by ear, letting fate dictate the best time to intervene–that or let my curiosity and increasingly heavy desire to know the truth break my fears.

On Monday, my Mom let me know that she was making a trip to the nursing home to visit my Pop Pop (her father).  I asked if I could join, and she was glad to have the company.

Before making the trek into South Jersey, we stopped at the local drug store to pick up miscellaneous items for him.  It was getting close to Christmas by this point, and he had always LOVED decorating his house for the holiday, so we picked up a few things to add holiday cheer to his new abode.  This is what family does.

We got back into the car, and started driving across the bridge into New Jersey.

As we drove along, we caught up on her side of the family–my aunt and uncle, their kids, and what all was new in their lives.  At some point over the course of those lefts and rights, my cousin’s pregnancy was brought up–she was having Irish twins! (Pregnant again almost immediately after giving birth.)  My Mom mentioned how surprising the second pregnancy was to the family, especially given that we had all originally thought that my cousin would struggle to conceive, as my Mom did, due to the condition they both dealt with (polycystic ovarian syndrome).

GOLD. MINE.  Here was the entryway I had been looking for.  It was now or chickenshit.

Me: “So, I know that you had to be on fertility drugs in order for you to get pregnant.  Is there anything else you two had to do in order to conceive?”

Mom: *gripping steering wheel* “Nope!”

We had just finished crossing the bridge, and were now following signs to get to the highway.

Me: “So, I know that Dad had cancer before we were born, and sometimes that impacts fertility.  Did you two have to use artificial insemination or anything in order to get pregnant?”

Mom: *gripping the wheel tighter and cringing slightly* “Nope!”

At this point, we were just starting to merge onto the highway (not my Mother’s favorite thing to do, mind you).

Me: “So, you didn’t have to, like, mix in a sperm donor’s sample to increase the chances or anything?”

Mom: *Maintaining the cringe, and tightening the death-grip on the wheel* “Nope!”

Me: “Oh, okay.  So, you know how a few years ago you took that DNA test to see your ancestry regional breakdown?  Like how German, British, Scottish, and Irish you were?”

Mom: “Yeaaaaa?”

Me: “Well, you know that I’ve been asking you and James about different family members so I could build out our family tree on that side.  I’ve just always been interested in knowing about that kind of stuff.  A few friends of mine had posted on Facebook about taking a DNA test like yours and how they had really cool regional breakdowns that they weren’t expecting, like 1% Asian or 5% African or something when they were otherwise like really white.  I just thought that was so cool, so I decided to tested, too, to see what my regional breakdown would be.”

“But when I got my results back, they said that I was like…I forget, I think maybe 50% British, 40% Irish, and 10% Scandinavian or something.  And that was really surprising, because I know that Dad’s side of the family is really well researched, and that they’re from like Austria, Russia, Poland…all places in Western Europe, and I didn’t see any of that in my results.”

Mom: *Eyes bulging. The cringe is real. The cringe is real. Impossible to grip the wheel harder if she were an Olympic athlete.* “Welllll….” she said.

Me: “Look, Mom.  I know that this isn’t something you’d prefer to talk about, but I’m hoping that you can be honest with me.  I just want to know the truth.”

Mom: *Clearly pained, and trying desperately to figure out how to do the right thing* “Lor…” *heavy sigh* “I feel bad because your Dad’s not here and it’s not really my thing to tell…”

Me: “Mom, I know, I do, but the thing is, I already pretty much know.  You’re not really even telling me at this point.  I mean, SCIENCE and math, you know?  It just doesn’t add up.”

“I just need to hear it from you, from my MOM, what’s going on.  Please.”

She finally broke.  Early on in their marriage, she explained, my Dad had been diagnosed with stage 4 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.  They didn’t even know if he would live.  The last thing they were thinking of was preserving samples of his sperm–the doctors were just focused on helping him survive.  Thankfully, he did .  However, when they finally had survived this terrifying beginning to their marriage and tried to start a family, over and over again they found themselves unable to conceive.

Eventually, as I knew, they gave up on trying and instead decided to adopt a little girl.  They were so happy to finally move on and have the family they’d been waiting for.  Only their happiness was short-lived–after having the little girl for several months and falling in love with that precious little baby, the birth mother suddenly changed her mind and decided to take her back.  My parents tried everything to try to keep her, but recent legal rulings relevant to their case had found in favor of the birth mother.  They had to accept this fate and move on.  It was very, very hard, especially on my Mother.  She still talks about that little girl that she loved with all of her heart to this day.

Afterward, they decided to conceive one more time, but taking on a new, more extreme strategy.  Artificial insemination via a sperm donor.  The fertility doctor who my Mom had been seeing, (and whom she still sees for her general health, to this day) told my parents that the donor had light brown hair, blue eyes, and was a medical student at the hospital where they received their treatments.  My Mom told me that that’s all she was told, and that all records related to the procedure had been destroyed.

My heart sunk to know the truth, but I was also relieved.  Finally, I had the truth, or the beginnings of it, anyhow.

I knew it was big for my Mom to reveal what she did–she is a very private person. She told me that no one knew about any of this, that the only people she and my Dad had told were his Mother and two brothers.  Literally no one, not her parents, not her siblings, not any of her closest friends, had ever known.  I asked her why this was, and she just explained again that it wasn’t any of anyone’s business, that it wasn’t something at the time to be talked about, and that she didn’t always trust others to keep private matters truly private.

As I blog about this. *Sigh*.

She asked me if I planned on talking to my Dad about it.  I told her that I did want to, but just him and me, sometime while I was home, although I didn’t know exactly when.  She asked if anyone else knew, and I told her about how I had called my aunt as soon as I got my results in.  My Mom wasn’t especially pleased, and was hoping I wouldn’t follow-up with her on what I had learned.  My aunt is very social, and much more open about things that happen in her life.  That’s not a trait that my Mom wanted when it came to her own secrets.  Only this secret, as much as she had always conceived as hers, wasn’t just her own–not anymore than my AncestryDNA results were exclusively mine, as opposed to equally owned by my triplet brothers.

I also told her that my brother, James, knew what I knew, and explained why I decided to tell him.  She explained her perspective on not telling him; her fertility doctor had advised my Mom and Dad to never tell, that they would be doing more harm than good.  Given that my brother wasn’t feeling well at the time that he confronted my parents, she felt it best to deny the truth, to keep it in.

Interestingly enough, her fertility doctor did, however, later tell my Mom that daughters always figure things out first.  My Mom laughed at how right she was.  I silently distrusted anything this doctor had said about the donor records being destroyed, or, if I’m being honest, that my Mom was being entirely truthful that she had said it.  After all, it took 31 years, several times asked, and a preponderance of evidence for my Mom to come clean–not to her sister, not to her father, but to ME–about a truth that was fundamentally my own.

Finally on the same page, we both marveled at how British and Irish I was–and Scandinavian, ha!  How cool!  But why hadn’t German shown up?  After all, that’s what she thought she was most.  I assured her that this was, definitively my DNA and hers (several common surnames had cropped up), and that while we may have ancestors who lived in Germany, it’s very possible that the family line had migrated there originally from the British isles.

Everything felt light and airy–free–as we pulled up to the nursing home.  Everything about the visit felt richer, deeper.

The last frontier felt miles away–revealing what I now knew to my father.