nature vs nurture and the power of a parents words

I don't know if it's every family but in our family we spend a fair amount of time comparing ourselves to one another.  We have regular conversations about who is smartest, tallest, fastest, most like our dad, biggest adventurer, thinnest, etc.  Ok to be fair it's mostly me and two of my sisters but to some extent all of us.  Do all families do that? 
Anna is, unanimously agreed upon, the smartest.  I am definitely on the bottom, or 2nd from the bottom rung.  This is not said with any kind of malice.  We weigh that the same as who is tallest.  (Michael for the boys, Val for the girls).  It's just a fact, and the truth is we are all smart enough, and  we define smart as apparent IQ + academic success which is no measure of success or happiness or talent etc.


So this weekend we had a new truth come to light.  To refresh, Mom is Russian and  Dad is French/Basque.  Some time ago Alec had a DNA test done, as is all the rage, and he is, no surprise Russian and French/Basque and some small percent random other things.  Anna just had her DNA done and got the results last week.  Her's came back a surprising Russian, Swedish, German and some random things.  Hmmm.


Fast forward 3 days, I got a phone call at 10pm.  That's late for my early-bird self and my sisters know this. It was Val and Anna group facetiming and they insisted that I get up and turn on the light, so I did.  Anna begins and tells the story of the test and how she then called mom and dad and they didn't fess up at first, but then they did.  Turns out, they said, that they were once young and newly married and starting their family.  They had me and Alec, a boy and a girl .  Dad thought they were done, and I guess mom agreed, although she always wanted a dozen kids.  Two makes sense, and dad being an immigrant, and having grown up very poor probably really wanted to provide financial security (that's my commentary). So Dad had a vasectomy and that was that....until.


One year later they joined the church and their world changed.  They became new in Christ and their perspectives and practices and principles all changed.  They now wanted a larger family, they now understood their eternal roles as mother and father, they now were disciples in every sense of the word.  So off dad went to the doctor to reverse what turned out to be a hasty decision. Well it was the 70's and this was new and what was done couldn't be undone. 


Undeterred they began to pursue adoption and then they learned about sperm donation and added that to their quest to grow their family. Do you see where this story is going?

Soon they had success and added Michael to the family, via donor.  Then Val and finally Anna.  Then they adopted Sarika, Andrea and Emily.  Our family was complete. I suppose the years rolled by and they were busy raising their family and I guess they never gave it another thought because however we got here we were theirs, and each others.


Secrets are impossible to keep in this new century.  And maybe they shouldn't be kept anyway. And now their 45 year old private decision is public.


So to say that we were shocked,that I was shocked, would be a mild choice of words.  I could not believe it. CRAZY!


I am not mad, just super surprised.  Super. Surprised. Different kids in the family responded different ways.  Everyone was shocked and surprised ..except Michael who said that years ago he knew his blood type didn't match and that he couldn't be genetically related to both of them but he figured it didn't matter so he went on with his life.  (what??)  Anna was immediately contacted thru ancestry by some half-sisters who share a donor with her. hello? what! so crazy!! It turns out that her donor has 40 children out there (so far) and they have reunions with him and each other.  He's got a PhD in astrophysics and is a musician and does photography.  Her halfs look just like her (weird) and are all engineers and doctors and what not. I am super curious to learn what other similarities she has with them.  Obviously they were each raised in their own families and with different backgrounds and dynamics and relationships...but they share some DNA and what does that mean? Nature vs Nurture, what an opportunity to see it in action.


I wonder what Val and Michael will find out.


Also one other life lesson.  What your parents tell you is the gospel truth to you.  And is so important.  So Val also has an unmatched blood type.  Which we knew.  And we spent a lot of time drawing the little square and trying to figure out how it happened.  In the end mom said she was her daughter and we kind of assumed that science somehow didn't apply to this case. duh  Maybe Michael is the smartest of the bunch after all :).  Anyway we are smart, educated, people who totally believed that somehow, in this case, science didn't work.  Imagine kids who have parents who tell them that they are awful or ugly or bad.  They would believe that on a deep level.  Or parents who teach their kids that sin is okay, or alternate lifestyles are fine.  How do you reconcile that?  If we believed science didn't apply to us what else could parents convince their children of?  Be careful with your words moms and dads and self.