My spit travels through the mail; answers come washing back

This is where the rubber meets the road -- or the spit hits the vial. Submitting samples for a DNA test is simple ... unless suddenly find yourself stricken by cottonmouth, as was the case when I submitted in January 2022.

It had been several years since Mom died and since I had resolved to find my birth mother. In fact, so much time had passed that one could argue I had not “resolved” to do anything.

But on some level, I must have realized the paralyzing effect of my usual overthinking and overplanning. Because I committed myself to the search with one uncharacteristic, purely impulsive outburst.

My verbal spasm occurred during a visit from my sister, Jennifer, in May 2020, between the spring and summer COVID-19 flare-ups. My wife, Debi, and I sat with her one afternoon on the deck of a waterfront joint in Beaufort as Jen’s new boyfriend fetched us another bucket of beers from the bartender. We were enjoying a beautiful late-spring day and the sensation of conversing in public without masks — an alien pleasure during the preceding months. Perhaps I was sparked by the pandemic and fear that the woman I intended to find was already dead.

But more likely, it was the empty bucket of beers in the middle of our high-top.

“I’m going to write a book about Mom, and the way I’m going to do it is by looking for my birth mother,” I said (or possibly slurred).

I don’t remember what we were discussing before I blurted this out, but there it was — a covenant effectuated by intentions stated aloud. I couldn’t take this back now, at least not in my mind. Realizing the gravity of my proclamation — and realizing it was a firm declaration of intent to do something I once swore I would not — I braced for Jen’s look of dismay.

But it did not come.

Instead, her lips curled into a tipsy smile, and she asked what the book would say and if I had started writing. I began explaining my intentions when, midway through my reply, her boyfriend returned with a new bucket. Having overheard part of the conversation, he offered his unsolicited advice: “Don’t do it. You could end up making a lot of unintended problems for people.”

I plucked a beer from the bucket and nodded pensively, as if pondering a thought that had not yet occurred to me. In reality, I was thinking, “Bite me, butt-wipe. No one asked you.” As Debi and I already suspected and as my sister eventually discovered, her new boyfriend was a narcissistic jerk — a discovery that, frankly, merits a separate blog.

The conversation moved on to other topics, though, a shift for which I was grateful.

But before Jen left the following day, I reminded her of our conversation and asked her not to tell Dad yet.

“I want it to come from me, and I want to find the right time.”

We said not another word about it to each other for 18 months — more than four years after Mom’s death.

I was completely sober for my second pronouncement, although I could have used a drink to settle my nerves. It was too early in the day for a beer but too late in the process to avoid the conversation. I was alone with Dad at his kitchen table one morning around Christmas 2021. I took a deep breath and explained what I had planned. In so many words, I was asking his permission to proceed, even though I had already ordered two DNA kits and downloaded the form I needed to request my adoption records.

None of it had arrived, though, and I told myself I would throw it all in the trash if Dad had any objections.

“Mom and I always told you that if you ever wanted to find your birth mother, we would help you do it,” he said without a hint of disturbance.

He was right—that was what they always told me. I was embarrassed that I needed the reminder and that my mental machinations had fueled any doubt about the sincerity of what Mom and Dad had long promised. I was eager to get started, and I could do so without secrecy or guilt.

The search for my birth mother would have been far more daunting in the days before high-speed internet and commercial DNA analysis. Even without these innovations, people still managed to find their birth parents or the children they placed for adoption. However, it was not uncommon for the search to require years of sleuthing, miles of travel, and hours combing through news clippings, cemetery lists, and birth and death certificates. Modern technology does not guarantee you will find the person you are looking for, but you are almost certain to learn more about yourself and your heritage along the way.

And if your cyberspace travels lead to a brick wall — the genealogist’s term for research dead-ends — you will at least smack into it at 5G speed.

What’s more, I did not start my search from a dead stop.

I grew up loving the stories Papaw Wilson and my Uncle Kenny told about our ancestors and the days of yore. They kindled my interest in genealogy, and during Mom’s final years, I amassed an online family tree with more than 2,500 entries, using online tools like Ancestry.com, FamilySearch and various public databases. I was no expert, and a more meticulous genealogist would probably scoff at my sloppy results. Nonetheless, this experience meant I did not have to learn new software and research techniques to get going.

For good measure, though, I embarked upon something of an old-school paper chase, as well.

The availability of adoption records varies from state to state and can even vary within a state according to the adoptee’s birth year. Prior to World War II, most states made available both the original and amended birth certificates for all involved in an adoption. But as post-war adoptions zoomed, most states sealed records to conceal a child’s illegitimacy and to prevent future intrusion of biological parents on the adoptive family.

Many of the rules changed again starting in the late 1970s. First, some states opened records to adoptees at the age of majority after advocates insisted their right to know their origins outweighed the birth mother’s right to privacy. You read that right — the birth mother’s right. Somewhere along the line, concern had shifted from the potential for the biological mother’s intrusion on the adoptive family to the adoptee’s potential intrusion into the life of the biological mother.

Laws that opened adoption records were followed by laws that opened adoptions themselves. It became common for adoptive and birth families to share identifying information and agree to some degree of ongoing contact.

So there is a mishmash of rules about who can learn what about blood relatives.

The Ohio Department of Health is my native state’s keeper of birth certificates and adoption case files. By Buckeye State law, those with adoptions finalized between 1964 and September 1996 — the timeframe that applies to me — can receive a copy of their file even if the biological parents have not signed a release form.

According to the agency’s website, the file typically contains an original birth certificate and a court-ordered decree of the adoption. It might also include information provided at the discretion of birth parents or the adoptee’s biological siblings, such as names or medical and social histories. Birth parents can also submit a contact-preference form, stating if and how they would like to be notified if the adoption file is released. Best-case scenario: The birth parent you are searching for is also looking for you, allowing the state of Ohio to connect you posthaste.

That was not my expectation, however. I thought it more likely that, in an age when teenage pregnancy was more scandalous than it is today, a young mother would most likely want to put such an episode far, far behind her.

Further, I was unsure exactly what the website meant when it said a full adoption record would be provided. I figured my original birth certificate would likely be covered in enough black redaction boxes to look like a Rorschach test.

So I filled out a form and mailed it off, but I did not expect a government bureaucrat would hoist my birth mother’s identity out of some dusty file cabinet for me. Rather, I invested more money and more attention in cutting-edge solutions.

You see, the night before I sent in my records request, I spit into two test tubes and packaged them up for shipment back to companies that would analyze my DNA.

By all I’ve read, as much saliva moves through the mail in test tubes as on envelope glue these days. A study published in 2019 by MIT Technology Review estimated that 26 million consumers had taken similar tests and added their DNA to one of four leading commercial ancestry and health databases.

Interest in genealogical DNA surged after commercial service became widely available in the late 2010s. The companies’ products work similarly. Taking a known standard submitted by a customer, the companies examine about 600,000 spots on the DNA chain where the code commonly differs from person to person. By analyzing your combination of these “single-nucleotide polymorphisms,” the services can determine what area of the globe your ancestors came from, how closely you are related to others in their databases, and whether you are predisposed to certain physical and personality traits.

Other online services — both for-profit and nonprofit — assist adoptees in their searches. Some even offer to make the initial cold call to a newly identified relative, relieving clients of the awkwardness.

One thing I already knew about my biological parents: If there is such a thing as an “inveterate cheapskate” gene, they had passed it along to me. So I decided to forgo the paid assistance.

I also carefully considered how many DNA services I needed to use. I figured that, initially, I would limit my submissions to the companies with the largest customer databases. That left me with two clear choices, each arriving at the industry pinnacle from a different direction.

Ancestry.com launched as a genealogy website in the early 1990s, well before DNA analysis was commercially available. Conversely, 23andMe is a relative newcomer that predicates its entire business upon DNA analysis, as the name implies. When I started my search, these two companies had compiled more human DNA information than any others — and there was not a close third. Indeed, it is likely the size of the Ancestry.com and 23andMe collections each far exceeds not only their commercial competitors’, but anything available in any single government or nonprofit DNA database, as well.

23andMe further distinguished itself by offering health reports in addition to possible ancestral matches. For an additional fee, the company will tell you if you have genes that make you more likely to develop Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease, certain types of cancer, or even a condition known as — I kid you not — “maple syrup urine disease.”

This service was attractive since I had never been able to answer the questions about my family’s medical history on a doctor’s new-patient form. And I'm not that much of a skinflint. I shelled out to find out whether a killer lurks in my chromosomes. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2021, I Googled holiday offers and ponied up $108.95 for a 23andMe “Health + Ancestry Personal Genetic” package and $58.95 for an Ancestry.com test.

Shortly after Christmas, I received my kits in the mail. The tests and the instructions were nearly identical. You can’t drink, smoke, eat or brush your teeth for a half hour before taking either. Once reasonably assured that your saliva is pristine, you spit into a test tube, add a stabilizing agent from a vial in the kit, then shake your tiny spittle martini.

Preparing the vial of saliva for submission.

From there, you seal your vial, ship it back from whence it came and wait for the mysteries to pour forth. Both companies give you self-sealing return-shipping boxes, replete with postage-paid labels and a little warning to the mailman that if he doesn’t handle your package with care, he should expect a spit-shine from a stranger.

The process was fairly easy. The most daunting part was secreting enough saliva to reach the test tube’s “full” line. It takes only about a quarter of a teaspoon to accomplish the task.

Sounds simple, right? Well, see how you do when it’s your time to salivate.

If you’ve ever experienced a shy bladder while trying to pee in a urinalysis cup, you can empathize with the wicked cottonmouth I suddenly developed as I brought the little funnel from the Ancestry kit to my lips. I pursed and puckered, thought of spaghetti and candy footballs, and strained my neck to muster enough saliva to fill the first vial.

The 23andMe tube was next and was an even more stern challenge. The cat must have thought I was about to yak a hairball because my eyeballs bulged and sinews popped from my neck. The harder I strained, the frothier my spit became. But finally, several minutes after I began, the last little bubbles at the top of the tube burst. Holding the vial to the light, I could see I was finally over the fill line.

Thank. God.

I spat on a Sunday and shipped that Monday. Both companies’ literature indicated that I would have results in four to eight weeks. I added a DNA page to my online Ancestry account, which I had established at least a decade earlier. I also went to the 23andMe website to set up an account and answer the myriad questions in the health-screening package. In addition to inquiries about allergies, dietary habits and known maladies (including dandruff), 23andMe wants to know if your desk is messy (mine is fairly orderly) and if you’re scared of heights (were I two inches taller, I’d be terrified to stand).

Once the spitting and licking were over, I tingled with the exhilaration of the adventure ahead. It was much like the feeling of turning the car ignition to start a long-anticipated vacation. I figured that within a few months, I’d receive my DNA results, and while I might not find my birth mother right off the bat, with any luck, I’d find a few close cousins and perhaps upload my digitized results into other online databases.

Then almost immediately, the U.S. Postal Service and the State of Ohio scuttled those expectations.

My writing had scarcely begun and my DNA had yet to be analyzed when I received a stiff, brown envelope from the State of Ohio Department of Health. The agency needed just two weeks to respond, not months, as I had imagined it would in the wake of COVID shutdowns.

In other words, I was no sooner out of the driveway before I was re-routed from the orderly course I had mapped for myself.

I revisited the Department of Health website to read again about the contents of adoption case files. I had persisted in the notion that my birth mother’s identity would be obscured beneath a black redaction box. Yet, the web-page description seemed to state quite plainly that her name would be revealed. And if that were the case, the analog portion of my plan would have rendered the cutting-edge, digital portion redundant at best.

I was not ready for this deviation.

For reasons I cannot fully explain, I pushed that stiff, brown envelope from the State of Ohio Department of Health to the side of my desk. It sat there for weeks, unopened.

Previous

Next

Want to be the first to know when new content is posted to Looking for Lynette? Go to the home page and sign up for email notifications.