Growing up, holidays usually just meant food for the three of us: my mom, dad, and me. I dutifully sat at the table for the required time before rushing to one of my friends’ houses to join in their merriment.
As an only child, my family was not the cornerstone of my life, as it was for some of my friends. Don’t get me wrong: I loved my parents and we were close. Our family simply had no numbers. My mother was an only child and my father was estranged from his brothers, both quite older than him.
But after my mother’s death in 2005, my father and I became best friends. Not a day went by without us talking, although the calls rarely lasted more than two minutes—just enough time to check in and figure out what he had for dinner. We texted after every New York Rangers game. He accompanied my wife, Jennifer, and me to her family gatherings during the holidays.
My parents and I on my graduation day in 1995.
A month after his death in 2018, I received a message on X asking if I was related to Joan and Wally. My parents? I thought. Naturally. I confirmed that I was their son and discovered that the sender was a cousin from my father’s side of the family. I was surprised by how hard I took my father’s death, so the idea of ​​connecting with someone related to him—to us—felt like a ray of hope in the midst of my grief. We arranged a phone call that lasted twenty minutes and agreed to keep in touch. Not exactly the long lost reunion I was hoping for.
However, the conversation did spark some interest in me: maybe I had more family that I would feel more connected to.
On 23AndMe.com, the results were immediate. But something immediately looked strange: none of the names were familiar, not even the last name.
My mind was racing. My parents had a secretive side. We always had a secret telephone number. When we ordered takeout, we used a different name, usually Matthews, a play on my middle name. I had always chalked it up to their eccentricities, but now I wondered if there was something deeper behind it.
I decided to message my strongest connection: almost 25% of our DNA matched, the site told me. I chose my words very carefully in a draft that remained open for a few days. I didn’t want to seem too concerned. The answer came within just a few hours. Her name was Anna. Her immediate speculation was that we were connected on her father’s side, a man she had never met. My wheels started turning with the possibilities. Did Wally have another son who was Anna’s father? Or did my father secretly have a daughter and she was Anna’s mother? I was sure that I had solved the riddle and that Anna was my niece. Maybe that was the secret I always thought my parents were keeping from me.
One day Anna told me a story about how her mother, who had died when Anna was only eleven, had given a baby up for adoption years before she was born.
As I started to answer, I stopped and read what she wrote for the second time. And a third time. Over and over again as my imagination ran wild.
What if I was the child her mother gave up for adoption?!?
What if my parents… weren’t my parents?
The secret is unraveled
Anna confirmed that her mother, Kathi, had a boy, and speculated that he was born around January 1972 (I was born in March of that year). This quickly became our new working theory, that I was indeed Anna’s brother.
I half-heartedly suggested that maybe they had mixed up my results with someone else’s. Or the lab made a mistake somewhere. Anna was already on Ancestry.com, so I quickly ordered a kit there to confirm our results. Messaging back and forth for a few more weeks while we waited for the results, we were able to learn even more about each other. This also gave me a chance to go over all the family records I had cleaned out of Wally’s apartment the year before. There was no information about a possible adoption. Also noticeably missing were photos of me as a newborn.
I searched every social media I could find of Anna’s family and found clear similarities in myself with photos of Kathi and Anna’s cousins. Sometimes the resemblance was uncanny.
After three weeks, which felt like an eternity, the results came back and our theories were confirmed: I was Anna’s brother.
This raised a lot of questions for me. How could I not find out in my 47 years of life that I was adopted? Why was I never told this? How was this secret kept and why? With my mother’s secret revealed, I began to wonder: who was my real father?
Anna’s family remembered the relationship that led to Kathi’s pregnancy all those years before. Although they were never sure, they theorized that his name was Jack and that he was a bartender on Long Island, New York in 1971.
I’ve looked at additional connections for further clues. Armed with the limited knowledge I had of Jack, I asked a new cousin if she knew of him. What she told me stopped me: Jack was not only alive and still in New York, he had been working as an actor for over 30 years. I went to IMDB and couldn’t believe what I saw. Jack was a character actor who regularly played bartenders, doormen, taxi drivers and the like on TV, films and in commercials. I was floored.
Although I had never met him, I had seen his face hundreds of times during appearances on shows like “The Sopranos,” “The Americans,” “Boardwalk Empire” and “Law and Order.” Or films like ‘Men In Black’, ‘The Yards’ and ‘Requiem for A Dream’. He had even appeared in a New York Lottery commercial that always aired during the New York Rangers broadcasts that I knew Wally was glued to at home in New Jersey.
Eventually I got Jack’s phone number from his brother, who I had also been in contact with.
I called and a warm voice answered eagerly. For the first time I spoke to my real father. There was no outpouring of emotion, just two grown men talking to each other as if they were strangers at the bar. I explained my background, where I lived, and he did the same. He had been married twice and had seven other children, making me number 8. Six weeks earlier, I was an only child whose parents had both died. Now I had eight siblings and not only was my father still alive, he was a famous actor.
Within a few minutes he brought up my mother, Kathi, and his history with her. She was young. It was an affair. Her parents convinced her to give me up for adoption, a decision I know could not have come easily. I talked about my adoptive parents, who I quickly realized were the heroes in this story. I will never know why they kept my adoption a secret, but I am grateful for everything they did for me.
Meeting my new family
A few weeks later, I traveled to Connecticut to meet Anna and my local aunts, uncles, and cousins, a visit that brought about a flood of emotions for all of us. I felt like this was a place I had been before, with my Aunt Mimi’s house feeling warm as if it were my own family home. Afterwards, I eagerly called Jack to share details about my trip, and we arranged our own in-person meeting to follow at his home in a few weeks.
Me with Anna, my sister I never knew I had.
My wife and I took the two-hour drive from our home in New Jersey and I watched the GPS tick over our ETA minute by minute. Then I pulled up to the house and saw my dad for the first time (outside of TV and movies). I felt the same warmth and acceptance that I felt with Anna and her family, with Jack and his wife Margaret. The four of us shared a few bottles of wine, like old friends who hadn’t seen each other in years. Not only were we family, we had so much in common with our love of music, film, and metro New York culture.
In the five years since we met, I have kept in touch with all of my new family and met my siblings. I have shared the joys of birth, the sorrows of death, and the celebration of family weddings that I missed growing up.
Me with my biological father, Jack.
On a few different occasions, I have been able to seamlessly bring the two sides of my family together, furthering my story. I have quite an extended family now. I’ve realized that my genetics played just as big a role in determining my characteristics and personality as my environment. I recognize this when I hear stories about my mother’s magnetic personality, or when I identify with my father’s theatrical mannerisms.
Since meeting, my biological father and I have discovered that we have a lot in common.
I have also discovered a newfound respect for my adoptive parents. For unknown reasons, they took this secret to their graves. They stepped in and gave me a beautiful life that I wouldn’t have realized otherwise.
I can’t help but think that maybe if I had known earlier, I could have met my mother. But I’m grateful to have my new family – and the loud, boisterous merriment I dreamed of all those years before.
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
