The Unknown

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedCollapsing Under the constantly expandinglimitless expanseof the unknownAs the tiny fragment of what constitutes myselfis obliteratedby the rays of a so-called life-giving sun"How can nothing come from nothing?"isn't the important questionThe all-consuming query I spend every waking ounce of reflective glory on "How do we transmutereeking irk to flashing gold?"How do we break thequantum tungsten moldtrapping the secrets ofour deepest inner truth?conscious butforever motionlessIs there a cipher built inthe fabric of the stars,drawing my glare-rimmed eyesto search the night without ceasing or flight into the land of slumber?wreaking terror from afarYour diamond-dusted seasmy comfort tea saving my dreary soul from thedisillusionment of livingwithout truly restingWithout truly knowing from whence I cameI seek the code my notes written on the pageI deem my song played I'll hear the stars taste the seaeach night I'll take my place at the seat of the mountaincome morning bounding without fear of stolen mortality projecting voicein a blasting coneclearing the wayon my trek up to heaven

Do you know how baseball players in movies and TV shows have a bunch of different families all across the country? Well, that trope is real, and baseball players aren’t the only people who do this; “regular people” do it to their very real families. Lest we get caught in a sexist timewarp, all genders are equal opportunity offenders in my world because the obvious fact is staring us in the face: it takes two to tango.

I’m sure it’s getting harder to accomplish this pointlessly hurtful task with technology closing the gaps. From now on, people with multiple families at least won’t be able to marry those unsuspecting additional partners for one thing. Probably…I mean, it would be almost impossible… Right?

This is, unfortunately, a concept that I was educated about early on. I have gone four rounds with my mother’s family on this life-altering roller coaster. The first couple of rides revealed that some long-time “family friends” were, in fact, family family. Not distant family either; my mother gained an aunt and cousins, etc.

Many of us growing up probably share this same fantasy regarding some friend of ours or other…

Well, imagine finding out, in your thirties, that you are actually cousins. The emotions that would go along with that. The memories, I suspect in my mother’s case, that could be regretted. My mother’s “best friend from back in California” even had a son whom I have still never met and whom she spoke of often when I was growing up. First, because she and her best friend joked about how we should have been best friends too, as we were born a few weeks apart. Later, she went on about how we were related. It was always a surreal experience when she spoke of it like there was some other version of me that didn’t exist, but she wished did. It made me less and less interested in this imaginary person she was conjuring up.

Only a few years later, the family network that was forming found another pocket across the country. I can’t quite recall the exact location; it wasn’t far from us, maybe Indiana. Most of the extended family lived in California, and we were in Missouri at this point in time, along with my mother’s parents, two siblings, and my cousins. Of course, there were other family members already known scattered here and there, like Washington and even far away Ukraine. Eventually, my mother decided to attend a family reunion being held by these new family members, and she reported back to the rest of us who did not attend. This happened sometime in my tween years.

The third stomach-wrenching turn was much the same but located only a few miles from where we had just been living in Missouri. By this time, my family (consisting of myself, my parents, and my brother. As well as my maternal uncle, his wife, and kids) had all moved to SW Florida. I want to say, thankfully, since there are horrifying stories you hear about long-lost relatives accidentally ending up married due to shockingly similar circumstances, but we moved to Florida, so…

Again, my mother went and met these new family members. Since my aunt never moved from the St. Louis metropolitan area, my mother just stayed with her on this fact-finding mission. I was not interested in being a part of it; by that point, I had some idea of why I didn’t want to connect with more members of my mother’s family, regardless of their potential to be nice people. I don’t recall the names of any of these new family members or any information about them, really, though I am prepared for them to appear like some ghostly entities haunting my ever-shifting moods.

One of the more interesting things about the situation is that three out of the four of these are my great-grandmother’s children she gave away. My great-grandfather was a Navy man and produced at least one child with a woman he likely saw numerous times; oddly enough, that was the last one, the family who moved to the same area we used to live in Missouri. Truth is almost invariably stranger than fiction.

The first two and next up are my maternal great-grandmother having children and hiding them with their father’s families while her husband was away on military tours. Traditionally, my mother’s family has been a military family. However, conscientious objection has become the norm on my side of the family anyway.

This fourth child wasn’t the youngest or the oldest; in fact, my great-aunt was dumbfounded to find she had a sister she didn’t know about, who was apparently born in her living memory. We still don’t know many of the details on that part of the story as my great-grandmother had passed by the time these folks were located; at least, I don’t. It is theoretically possible more information was gathered, and my disinterest and distaste for the subject left me out of the loop.

So, after a long clicking ride up a steep rise, I was lulled into a false sense of security when we took a gentle flat turn instead of diving directly back down. After fifteen to twenty years of quiet, I thought that maybe things were finally settled down, but not so. I was finally dropped back down a screaming, gut-wrenching, plummeting hill.

My brother told me in passing that our grandfather isn’t our grandfather, that my Dad’s Dad wasn’t his father at all. Apparently, my father had one of those DNA tests done, for health reasons, according to my brother, and the test showed his biological father passed of liver cancer in 2006. This hit me harder than the other ones for multiple reasons I can think of.

For one, my father was named after “his father” and his “grandfather” before him. My dad was supposedly the third of his name. When I decided I couldn’t continue to go by my given first name in order to sever my present from the abuse I suffered in the past, I chose to take up my middle name, which is the same as my father’s. I hold a lot less resentment and anger towards my father than I do my mother, not to mention I don’t want to have to deal with the hassle of legally changing my name or answering too many questions. It seemed like the right answer at the time, it only took two months for this disruption.

Another reason this seems so hurtful is that my father’s family was already in the deep end of the Pop’s pond. My father only had half-brothers; now, there is an indeterminate number of new siblings. I am sure my parents are finding out, but I haven’t heard from them since I am no longer in contact with them.

My grandmother has always kept these kinds of secrets from her children. My uncle was kept in the dark about his parentage all the way up until his high school graduation, even though many other people, including my mom and dad, knew. This caused the rippling effect of my mother spilling the beans allegedly on accident, placing a metaphorical wedge between my mother and my father’s family before they had even married.

Of course, looking back over my life, nothing can ever really be trusted to have been “an accident” with my mother anymore, but this would be one of the few things she is blamed for I wouldn’t blame her for. It’s no one else’s fault for telling the truth; a secret can’t stay buried forever. So it isn’t shocking to find out there were more secrets to be had, but it is still hurtful.

I currently don’t know what my name might have been if I were organized under the correct family tree. It doesn’t change anything legally, just like deciding to go by my middle name didn’t actually change anything, but somehow, it changed everything.

You would think something like this wouldn’t matter, especially since I only saw the man maybe three times my whole life, yet I feel unmoored, cut adrift from the pier, left to float in the sun. If he were related to me, he would have been the deadbeat dad my father talked about him being. So why is this such a difficult thing to get past?

One of the men who rambled through her life was good to her sons, and they all called him Dad. Who knows if he was biologically related to any of my family members anymore? It doesn’t matter because he was there when they needed a dad, and we should all be lucky enough to have a father who loves us. Unfortunately, my step-grandfather passed away before I was born.

Even if my grandmother wanted to preserve the memory of the good man who cared for her children properly, once her sons were grown, the time should have one day come to find out their true parentage, maybe that day when my mother busted open the egg, instead of turning the whole shit pot on her head, so there would at least be a chance of figuring this all out.

The last, possibly the biggest trigger for me, is that my dad’s family, while maybe not the “nicest” people, I have come to realize they are much more typical than my mother’s. My great Aunt (pictured with me above), who took me in during the most difficult time in my life, is the sister of that grandfather. She loved us, spent time with all of us, and we loved and cared for her.

She took me into her home when I was literally dumped out into the streets by my parents, so the thought that she suddenly evaporated from my family was one of the worst things about this. I know she didn’t; she loved me, and I loved her down to the end. She continues to care for me, in tiny ways even after she’s passed, in the little gifts she left for me, but it hurts a little still.

I had not cared about and had, in some ways, been afraid to have a DNA test done. I am finally getting to the point where I am questioning almost everything I thought I knew to be true about myself. With other facts that keep coming out based on historical and civil records, I feel I am only becoming more grounded in that belief. So, I am getting more and more comfortable with the idea of getting one. Not because the ancestry information that will come back matters so much, but because I am collapsing under the pressure of the void my past seems to be.

K.B. Silver