I know almost nothing about my heritage, and I’ve left it that way on purpose. My sister on the other hand is very involved in mapping out her (our) genealogy, but not me. I’ve kept that door tightly sealed hiding any additional unwanted skeletons.

What I know:

I’m an orphan.

My father was an alcoholic.

My mother a recovered alcoholic (who died at my father’s hands when I was just 7).

I had one loving schizophrenic grandmother.

A sister I share so little in common with, I often wonder if we are actually related.

What exactly could I learn that I might want to claim?

Maybe part of me wishes that I’m not part of this lineage.

Maybe my father was-well, anything other than who he was.

Maybe? I could dream. Maybe that is why I’ve waited so long-

The idea that maybe I have a family somewhere out there.

Maybe I’m not an orphan with a schizophrenic grandmother.

What else could there be to know-anything redeeming? I’ve spent a lifetime burying these skeletons. Why would I want to unearth them now? What else could be there? I’ve created a version of me that is largely inspite of my beginnings, rather than because of them. But for some reason I am becoming curious. As I am trying to piece together my past and understand who am I. The question that reverberates in my mind like an old turntable skipping over and over and over. Who am I? If I am not this image that I have so carefully pieced together, then who. Who am I? Maybe it is the fleeting hope that I am not related, that I have a different father-perhaps a writer, or a surgeon, a doctor of philosophy. That seems plausible. If I’m anything, I’m philosophical. What am I afraid of? Will it reveal my schizophrenic lineage, or genes that will show sociopathy? Will this test-tube be like little fingerprints that lead me to exactly what I don’t want to find? Whatever it is, I think I’m ready. After all, if I’m the author of my own life, then I am deciding I am more than a product of my environment (and even DNA). I am more than this narration I have bought into-an orphan, small-fragile, accommodating. Maybe I can’t pick my DNA, or the events that have unfolded in my life, but surely I can choose how I react, respond and interpret the events, and moreover who I am in the context of those events. So I hit submit and wait. Soon I will be holding the little glass test-tube, submitting a sample in hopes that I will find out something.

‘