Belated Father's Day Mumblings

Father's Day came two weeks after learning about my heritage from an autosomal DNA test, so my dad was already on my mind. I wondered how surprised he'd been to learn (upon his demise) that he was in fact not as Native American as he was led to believe. This is what happens with broken families, sketchy record keeping, and oral family folklore. I was surprised to learn the truth of my heritage for more reasons than the 1% Native American. I also learned that I was 1% North African, 2% Eastern European, 5% Italian or Greek (?), 9% Iberian, 12% English, 14% Western European, 27% Scandinavian, and 29% Irish. I mean, duh on the Irish, I kind of knew that being that I'm fair-skinned, freckled, a red-head, and my maternal grandmother was first generation Irish American, but wow on the rest, right? It's interesting learning about your roots, but also a little disheartening. A part of me is mourning losing my Native American identity, but another part was kind of relieved because it never felt 'real' to me anyway. Like wearing someone else's dress and going to their church. I felt like a fraud, and now I know why. What that 1% says is that one of my four times great grandsomeone was Native American. That's my great-great-great-great grandsomeone. That's a someone who lived roughly around 1700, give or take 25 years. In my mind, 1700 wasn't that long ago. History is alive for me, and it always has been. I don't see it as some old shit that happened a long time ago.

Anyway. I didn't really celebrate Father's Day this year. I didn't post a photo of my da on FB or say Happy Father's Day to my husband. I did give the husband a polished rock that had the word 'joy' inscribed on it because, well, everyone needs a rock with the word 'joy' inscribed on it, especially when they forget the joy on the daily and focus all their attention on the shit.

That's twice I've used that word here and spelled it out instead of replacing the 'i' with an asterisk. Progress.

Over and out.