FROM: [email protected]
DATE: Nov 11, 2016 08:21 PM
SUBJECT: Job + child in my house
Dear Basam,
Here is the update with my job search for you: I sent your resume to Dale Woodson via my son, Bruce. Bruce said Dale has been knee-deep in some terrific mess regarding a bridge that collapsed up in Pittsburgh (early morning, fortunately, only three people dead) and the state of Pennsylvania is suing the company that conducts safety checks. Anyway, Bruce is going to follow up with Dale in a few weeks when the dust of that proverbial wreckage settles (no pun intended).
Additionally, I wanted to fill you in on the latest. I mentioned to you I was going to be rather tied up because of hosting this teenage boy for a while. Well, as it happens he became very interested when I mentioned a bit about Kindred, the DNA testing, etc. I happened to mention to him about the match with Henrietta Gleason and Harry’s face lit right up, saying that 49% is quite a match, absolutely sisters. That was a shock, but I kept my wits. He got onto the internet one evening when I was already asleep, and he found her. There was a notice in an online paper from the area about a local famous woman doing groundbreaking research in soil science named Henrietta “Hattie” Nell Gleason (She goes by “Hattie”). Harry followed some incomprehensible rabbit trail to find an address for her, indeed, as you remembered, in Fort William, Scotland. So now I am faced with this information and a decision has to be made. What do you think?
Warm regards,
Sybil Van Antwerp
December 26, 2016
Dear Theodore,
Thank you for the buckeyes you left on the doorstep yesterday, and a merry (and belated) Christmas to you, and a happy third day of Hanukkah as well. Everyone enjoyed the candies a great deal. Fiona didn’t return home, and Bruce and his family only came for the day yesterday, so today I am tidying. I do apologize I wasn’t able to attend the symphony performance with you in December. It appears Harry will be back up tomorrow or the day after, so then I’m back minding him.
When Harry gets back next week would you like to come have dinner and a game of Ticket to Ride?
Warm regards,
Sybil
(cont. Jan 2, 2017, previous pages UNSENT)
Each time the calendar rolls over to a new year, I become introspective. It’s as if I am going into the pantry and surveying what is there, taking inventory—what I have, what’s needed, the state of things. That’s what I do every January first. So I spent the day thinking yesterday and one thing I decided was that I’m going to write to this woman in Scotland after all. You know I do believe in an intelligent God with plans and a firm grasp on what is happening down here—and if I’m meant to reach her, I will. At times it seems like insanity to trust in a thing like that. And yet I do. I must.
How strange my life has become recently. When Harry arrived in mid-September I’d assumed it would be for a few days or a week, and here we are these months later. He’s coming back Sunday. Fiona’s worried I’m being used; I am not. I’ve insisted he stay as long as it’s the best thing for him. And now there is this Scottish woman with whom I am hoping to connect, one tiny little person out there in a sea of billions who is theoreticallymy family. How strange it all feels to me. I’m sitting at the desk this morning, it’s fourteen degrees outside and snowing here and there, I’m all tucked in here with my tea and thinking about how strange it is, and wondering—have I been lonely? I wouldn’t have ever said that, but now that I sit here thinking, I wonder, was I always lonely? I’m not sure I’ve ever felt at home in the world, but I’m not sure that’s unique. I’m not sure. I’m really not sure what I sat down here to say, but it’s like the whole neat thing has had a good shake and, for the first time in a long time, I have no idea what’s around the corner.
Ms. Henrietta Gleason
Hoply
The Yule Road
Fort William PK98 4FC
Scotland
United Kingdom
January 6, 2017
Dear Ms. Gleason,
Please let me begin by saying this is far and away the strangest letter I’ve ever written, and I have written a number of letters. My name is Sybil Stone Van Antwerp and I was born in the United States on May 29, 1939, and adopted a little over a year after by Lawrence and Margaret Stone. I’d like to begin by saying that I never (never, never) meant to do something like this.
A few years ago at Christmas my oldest child, my son Bruce, gave me a gift of membership and DNA testing with an organization called Kindred. I believe his intent was twofold: his father (my ex-husband) was dying and he and his sister, Fiona, were facing that starkness of mortality and wanting to hold onto something, as we all do. Watching their father be erased with the incoming tide made them cling faster to me in a way, and that sense, I suppose, of one’s lineage or history. In any case it took me some time to accept not only the gift but also the fact that there was something missing for them. I sent the saliva sample away at last. I was surprised by how anxious I became in waiting, an anxiety I couldn’t define, and then the results came by mail. The pie chart of my alleged ancestry woke up something in me I hadn’t even known was in slumber, a deep and hidden thing. I admit I wept over it. Do you wonder why I am sharing all of this with you? I rather do. Let me get to the point.
I never intended to open my DNA to the sharing option.What I had gained in knowing my biological lineage threaded back to the British Isles, Russia, and Native Americans was plenty. It was a warm sense I had, even the vaguest, of roots. But there was a night when I was emotional, rather electric and outside my normal right mind, and it sounds mad, but by mistake I checked the box in the Kindred website to allow connections between my DNA and that of other users to be established. Before I knew it, within a week, I had an e-mail indicating Kindred had found a user with a 49% DNA match to me, and I am certain you know the direction of this, which is, namely and exclusively, that this person was, or, is, I believe, you.
For a number of reasons (not worth getting into) I didn’t contact you initially, and then after a few months, I did. Immediately I received an error message from the website saying you were no longer a user. At the risk of frightening you, and in the interest of full disclosure, I admit I asked my friend who worked for Kindred to try and find your address (this was all happening over months, you see; I first learned of you in mid-2015) and then I lost communication with this individual, and I was of course putting a great deal of thought into these decisions. In due course I was able to sort out that you lived near Fort William, and then this month I’ve had a child staying with me, a disturbed boy who is the son of a friend, but he’s extremely clever, you know, growing up in the age of the internet, and he found your address, and…VOILÀ.
My DNA matches your DNA by 49%. I know nothing about my biological family other than that I was adopted from inside the US. I was raised largely in Philadelphia.
