Sisters | Chapter 2

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I remember that Roberta really wanted a child. I remember that very much.
She was going to have a baby. I wasn't going to give up until something.
Right. She was going to find a way.
And if it had to be the way she did, then that's what she had to do. I'm now decades removed from that little boy who was hung up on by his father.

But even all grown up, I'd ruminate about who he was, about what was really going on. I tried to confront him several times, and it was just one lie after another, and then I just had too many lies.
When I was 38, already married with kids of my own,

something happened that would set me down a new path. I found out this story was actually way bigger than just me.
And more people than I could ever imagine were wrapped up in this. I actually even like had a dream

I was with my mom

sitting with her in a car up in this. I knew there was something someone wasn't telling me.

We struggle because on the one hand, it's like, do you tell somebody or do you let them continue with the life that they have?

It's kind of like I feel taken.

Taken is the wrong word.

I feel, you know, played.

I wasn't being honest.

This is my other question because I was like, where did the lie begin?

Where did the lie begin?

From Waveland and Rococo Punch, this is Inconceivable Truth.

I'm Matt Katz.

Episode 2. Sisters.
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All right, now we're on the record. Okay.
How do you feel about that? I feel good. We're outside in our lovely garden, pretty much just hiding from our children so we can talk honestly.
One of them staring at us right now. Through the window.
Okay, please introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Deborah Katz, married to Matthew Katz, a.thew katz aka matt katz i'm his wife of 15 years and we've been together how many years before that i'm really bad with dates and babe i'm remembering how long we've been together you know what yeah it's gonna be 19 years in January.
Wow. Yeah long we'll be together.
You know what?

Yeah.

It's going to be 19 years in January.

Wow.

Yeah. Okay.

That's amazing.

So I've seen a lot of your daddy issues through the years.

And hopefully you find what you're looking for.

When Debra and I started dating, I actually wasn't looking for anything when it came to my father. This was one of the few stretches of my life where I didn't really have existential questions about him.
After I found my birth father, Warren, when I was 16, we had a sporadic relationship. We hung out every few months, talked on the phone here and there.
But sometimes on those phone calls, he'd say outrageous things to me. Talking shit on my mom, whom he had stolen

money from. Richard, the man who adopted me, who raised me, who I now call dad.
And even my

grandmother, my mom's mom, who had helped him out so many times. So I knew who my father was.

It wasn't all great, but it was knowing. What do you remember about my relationship with him when you and I met? I knew what he had done to you as kind of a child with just being absentee, obviously.
And I knew what he had done to your mother, bankrupting her. I had no reason to probably to like him.
Yeah. You would have like phone calls every, like I would say maybe like once a month the most.
Right. Sometimes I'd kind of witness it or sometimes you'd be coming off the phone call after a drive home where you were talking to him.
Like, what would I say about them afterwards? Let's just say I never liked him because he didn't bring anything to your life. I remember you kind of coming off the phone calls frustrated.
You know, he had no interest in what you were doing. You would try to tell him about your life.
He would kind of cut you off or he'd just talk about random stuff or, you know, your cousins at the time. Yeah, his nephews, if I was like talking about, I was, you know, relatively early on in my career.
Yeah, like if you got an award, I remember, you'd kind of be proud to want to tell him about a journalism award or like something that you were covering. Yeah.
And he would like change the

subject and start talking about how his nephews were doing well and making a lot of money or

something. Yeah.
I think you just would come away from those conversations like unsatisfied,

but it wasn't just you calling him. He'd reach out at times and he would call or leave a message.

I feel like he actually mostly, he was the one who mostly called at that point in my life. Yeah.
And I remember sometimes just like listening to a voicemail, just kind of, he was always a character, you know? So we'd have like, we'd listen and we'd giggle a little bit, but honestly, like you would leave those conversations kind of sad. And so being like your partner, I was protective of you and I like didn't like him because he, you know, a simple conversation would hurt you.
I did get to meet him once, which was interesting. He was in town with a girlfriend at the time and we went to dinner in the neighborhood.
With his girlfriend?

Yeah.

You remember that?

Oh, my God.

He had, like, some girlfriend that I think was, like, divorced or widowed, and she had her own money.

And I think he kind of, like, insinuated that he always finds someone. Yeah, he always found somebody who seemed to be wealthier, a woman.

To, like, yeah, like kind of help take care of him in a way.

Yeah. So what was your impression of him? Well, first thing was he was taller than you and he had dark features.
You know, he had dark hair, dark eyes, he had bushy hair, eyebrows. And I remember him having like kind of a bigger bulbous type nose and feature wise didn't look anything like you.
Yeah. And so that was strange to me.
Do you remember what we like talked about at that dinner? Do you remember? Because I found him like could be, you know, easygoing in terms of talking. I don't remember being awkward or difficult to get through.
That's fair. He had a little humor to him, which I think you appreciated.
Right. He talked shit, which I appreciate.
No, I mean, that's the thing is, I mean, obviously I'm married to you, so I love you very much. That's so sweet.
And you're a very dynamic, interesting person. You know, like, if anything, the only thing he should have been the most proud of is you.
And he showed zero aspect of that. Yeah.
But I could tell you really wanted to have a relationship with him. You wanted to bond with him.
You wanted him in your life.

And so that was tough.

I tried to respect that, but I didn't see

in any way

how it was benefiting you. If anything, it was

like hurting

you to have him in your life.

Yeah.

I remember dinner ended and he gave me a hug.

Sort of, maybe.

Probably.

I think, you know, he clearly said like it was nice to meet you.

He would tell me he loved me.

I wouldn't say it back.

And then that was the last time I ever saw him. Not long after she met Warren, Debra and I got engaged.
And I started obsessing over whether I should invite him to our wedding. I knew not inviting him and not inviting anyone on that side of the family could just totally end our relationship, could sever

the relationship forever. He wasn't worth an invite.
He didn't deserve an invite. But that's not why he wasn't invited.
You remember the punch in the face story. Right, because he told me on the phone one day, after we were engaged, before invitations had been sent out, he was pissed about something from the past.

And he said,

if I ever saw Richard

on the street, I would punch him in the face. This was something I couldn't stand for.
I was four when Richard married my mom and he had raised me. He adopted me.
I took his last name. And so that clinched it.
No way would I invite a guy to my wedding who had threatened to punch my dad, even if that guy was technically my father. At some point, he realized that he wasn't invited, which he was annoyed about.
Yeah, he was pissed. Pissed enough to stop talking to me again, just like when I was a little kid.
He stopped calling, stopped returning my calls. A couple of years went by like this, total silence, total separation.
But then in 2011, I dialed him up because I had some news. You got up the courage when I got pregnant.
Yeah, I figured somebody, just like somebody would want to know if they had a child out there, they'd want to know that they have a grandchild out there.

So I thought it was the right thing to do, even if he didn't want to talk to me.

But I thought it was the right thing to do to call him up and tell him that he was going to be a grandfather

for what I thought was the first time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And he said, I don't care.

That was literally his reaction was, I don't care. He said, I don't care.
And then he said, just for good measure, just to fucking twist the knife, he said, no one in the family likes you, meaning nobody in his family. I remember I was really upset after this call.
This was. No, like it was over the top.
I was real. I was pretty upset.

Yeah.

Just mean.

And just so selfish.

Yeah.

Every time he acts like a shit at you,

like I can't believe another situation is happening.

That was the last time I spoke to him ever,

ever, ever,

ever.

So right.

And then a few years go by,

we have one daughter,

Sadie.

A couple of years later,

we have one son,

Ruben. And then we decide to take DNA tests.
We have one daughter, Sadie. A couple years later, we have one son, Reuben.

And then we decide to take DNA tests.

Debra and I bought and took the DNA tests as joint wedding anniversary presents.

For our very Jewish wedding, by the way, with the rabbi and the broken glass and everything.

So we spit in the little vial, sealed it up, sent it to Ancestry.com, and waited.

So what'd you get there?

I mean, I am full 101% Ashkenazi Jewish from Eastern Europe.

I mean, I have like dark features a little bit,

so I was like really hoping for a little bit of like Portugal or Spain because, you know, they were like offering those Portuguese...

Citizenships?

Citizenships, but...

Thank you. and for a little bit of like Portugal or Spain because, you know, they were like offering those Portuguese...
Citizenships. Citizenships, but...
I thought my results would be the same as Deborah's, but that's not what happened at all. According to the test, I was just half Ashkenazi Jewish, which means just about half of my DNA came from Eastern European Jews.
Not all of it, as I had thought for the first 38 years of my life and had never any reason to believe otherwise. No, this test said actually I had half non-Jewish roots in Ireland, Scotland, or England.
And this? This was totally out of left field. Yeah, we started like trying to make sense of this.
It didn't make sense. So that was one thought we had was that my mother, I mean, was she adopted? Like, remember, we were going down that path.
At one point we thought, you know, there was talk that Roberta's mother or grandmother had come through England on the way from Poland, which was something that happened. The boat would take you to England.
You'd be there for like six months. Maybe shenanigans ensue.
And somehow something happened there. That was one of our theories.
So many different paths. So then my mom decides to do it.
Right? Did I buy it for her for her birthday maybe? I don't remember. But she did it because she's a good mom.
Yep. Whatever you need.
So she did it and she once came back 100%. Not only did she come back 100% Ashkenazi Jewish.
But she also came back your mother. She came back officially as my mother.
Which she should know because she gave birth to you. Right.
But, you know, these ancestry tests, they show you your relatives. And she literally came back as my mother.
Yes. So then it became, okay, it's Warren.
Is Warren Irish? So then do you remember the theories we had about Warren? Well, yeah, because you knew Warren's parents. You knew their history because the journalist and you actually, the few times you spent with them, you got their history.
I interviewed them on the phone. So you knew exactly where your family had come from.
Ten years earlier, 15 years earlier. Warren's parents had escaped Russia, they told me, and they started a Jewish butcher and a synagogue with some other families from the old country.
So I knew they were definitely Jewish. So then it's like, okay, was Warren adopted somehow? I was thinking, you know, Warren was born in 1941 and he lived in Queens.

You know, you'd have Jewish families maybe on one block and Irish families on the next block. So maybe there was an Irish family with six kids on the next block over.

And the old man went to war, dies, you know, fighting the Nazis.

So maybe the mother's got this new kid comes along.

She can't take care of him.

There's a nice Jewish family down the block.

She quietly adopts him out.

That was what we decided.

We had all these ideas.

Right.

Tell me what your grandmother Elsie said to me,

may she rest in peace,

when we first met while we were dating.

Yes.

So this would be 2005.

Okay.

In 2005, I would visit my grandma regularly. She lived in central New Jersey.
So I would drive up from Philly and take her out to lunch. So I was excited for her to meet my new boyfriend and we're sitting across from her.
She was a charming, funny, unique lady. So she's looking him like all around in the face,

just staring straight.

She's really looking at me.

Really looking at you as you're talking.

And I've got the blondish hair and the reddish tinted skin.

Yeah.

And I'm, you know, hairless.

You know, I'm not like a hairy Jewish guy.

She's like, you're Jewish? And you're like, yeah, I'm Jewish. She's like, you're not Jewish.
You're Irish. So this is like way before that.
I mean, over 10 years from when you get the result. More than 10 years.
And then she said that she was going to call you and you're going to have to bleep this. She used a slur for Irish people and said...
That that was going to be her nickname for you. Her nickname for me was going to be Mick.
She was like, Grandma, oh my God. So embarrassed.
Grandma Elsie had come up in the Bronx, where the Jews hung out with the Jews, the Irish hung out with the Irish, and you got by by figuring out quickly who was who.

Apparently, I looked like the Irish guy down the block.

It wasn't the only time Debra and I had heard that.

Our Irish friend Nancy, before we became friends,

she said she'd see us in our neighborhood and refer to us as the Jewish girl married to the Irish guy.

And now, when I look in the mirror, I'm starting to physically make more sense to myself. So yeah, there is something to this.
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I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. And I'm Anasiga Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor.
We've each spent decades on the front lines of crime witnessing the devastation that violence leaves behind. And for us, the heart of these cases is the people involved, the victims whose stories deserve to be told and not forgotten.
Every week on Anatomy of Murder, we dissect the layers of a homicide through the lens of those who know them best, the families, the detectives, and the prosecutors. With experience that runs deep and access to those closest to each case, we take you well beyond the headlines.
Listen to Anatomy of Murder wherever you get your podcasts. You and Bill Howe.
$600 off the line. I'm Matt Katz.
I'm speaking with Mother Jones Senior Editor Wes and Zena about his most recent story on white supremacy. In 2018, my stress dream, my nightmare about a stressful work situation, unfolded in real time, in real life, in front of a real audience.
I'm in the studios of WNYC Public Radio in New York, and I'm in front of the microphone, live on the air. Usually I'm a reporter, but today I'm hosting the noon radio show.

I'm filling in for only like the third time ever.

I'm excited, I'm scared, and I don't entirely know what I'm doing.

So have the number of people trying to leave this movement.

Why is that, do you think?

I'm halfway through the live show when we get to a break

and a producer comes into the studio. Matt, the next guest isn't here.
After we air the headlines at the top of the hour, you have to fill 30 minutes with callers. Find something to talk about.
Oh, shit. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Lakshmi Singh.
And I'm scrambling like, okay, I've already been promoting this upcoming segment on immigration, so I guess I better vamp on that? What if I just get people's immigration stories? Like, how did they get here? Okay, shit, we're back in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. With immigration at the top of the national conversation these days, we thought we'd take a few minutes to hear your immigration story.
Specifically, is there something that you're now learning about your background that you weren't aware of before? Are you on Ancestry.com and finding long-lost relatives? Are there surprises in your family history? Anything crazy going on in your family history? Disappointments? Unanswered questions? We want to hear from you now. You can call us at 212.
But then I was like, if I'm asking them to tell their stories, then I should also tell my story. And of course, at the top of my mind was this family mystery we still hadn't figured out.
Like, how in the world was I Irish? So far, it was kind of a secret. Just my family knew.
I told some friends over drinks.

But now, without really any time at all to think it through, I was going to reveal it live on the radio. I've had some surprises of late.
I guess I'll get us started here. I grew up thinking I was 100% Ashkenazi Jewish from Eastern Europe, but I spit in a cup and sent it to Ancestry.com last year and found that, at least according to their DNA analysis, I'm just 43% Ashkenazi Jewish.
Another 43% of my DNA indicates I'm from England, Scotland, Ireland. Listening back on this, I was clearly trying to sound kind of matter-of-fact about this whole thing.
But these DNA results I got were not something I could reconcile with my lived experience. And then the call started coming.
Let's talk to Mitchell over in Brooklyn. Hi, Mitchell.
Hi. Deborah over in Newark.
Oh, hello. See if April in Somerville's there.
April? Hi. Hi there, April.
Tell me your story. The phone lines filled up.
It was a pretty beautiful experience for me, a convening of all of these people who, like me, were longing to connect with ancestors. And some had already found success doing so.
Ellen in Westchester. Hi, Ellen.
Hi, Matt. Thank you very much for taking my call.
And I was fascinated to hear your story just now because it mirrors mine very closely, including almost to the exact percentage, the results from the DNA test. Are we cousins, Ellen? Are we related? We probably are.
I hope we are. Let's go to Michael in Jersey City.
Hi, Michael. Hey, Matt.
How are you doing today, buddy? Doing great. Doing great.
What's your story? Through some of the census records, I found out that my father had a brother that died as an infant but was never spoken about. I found out that I was actually descended from an illegal immigrant who came in through Ellis Island.
Let's talk to Tony over in Brooklyn. Hey, Tony, are you there? I am here.
Some of these stories were nuts.

One guy called in saying he's got a family tree of 1,300 names.

I couldn't believe it.

I had like 10 people on my family tree.

I was jealous.

It's an amazing thing.

And I'm so happy that you guys are doing this little segment here. Well, I'm so glad you called.

You've got to get it across.

The people, they have to ask their relatives where they're from. There, I'm so glad you called.
You've got to get it across to your people.

They have to ask their relatives where they're from.

There's so much to learn out there.

Yes. And I can only encourage you.

You're doing a great job here.

Thanks so much.

It's so important for us to understand where we come from.

I really appreciate everybody calling in with your stories.

That was wonderful.

This is Midday on WNYC.

We'll be right back after the break.

The half hour of radio was like a high.

Just hearing all these people who had uncovered family secrets and histories,

the type of information I craved myself.

But more than that, it would actually set in motion a years-long quest to uncover my own family secrets. And it started with an email from someone who was listening to the show that day.
Pretty mundane email, really. It was from a guy named Lou.
Lou was a listener who wrote to me a lot to comment about whatever I was reporting on on the air. This email contained no formalities, no dear Matt, just, first, let me say that I know little about this stuff, Lou says.
But while Lou says he doesn't know anything about genetics, he does know a guy from synagogue with a PhD in genetics. And that guy told Lou that DNA tests may not be that accurate for testing Jews because we're a small percentage of the population and the DNA database doesn't have enough information on us.
So maybe my results are wrong. But maybe not.
Lou says you got to do more research. And it gives me a link to a private Facebook group called Tracing the Tribe.
It's a place for Jewish genealogy nerds. A couple of days passed.
One night I'm giving my kids a bath. Some night's bath time is joyous and adorable.
Other times it's, it's, you know, it's just kind of annoying. And this was one of those times.
So I step away for a minute to waste time on Facebook and I remember Lou's email. All right, what the hell? I dash off a quick note on tracing the tribe, giving them my spiel, asking to be admitted into the group.
They let me in immediately and I write a post. Hi all, new member here.
I'm starting to dig deep into my family history after my interest was piqued following an Ancestry.com DNA test. I believed I was 100% Ashkenazi Jewish.
Turns out I'm British, Scottish, or Irish. I've been tracing my family tree to make sense of this.
I know DNA tests aren't necessarily accurate, but I would like to solve this mystery. Thanks for having me! The first person to respond was blunt.
Hate to break it to you, but sounds like you have one non-Ashkenazi parent. When this happens, it usually means your father isn't who you expected.
Okay, Facebook conspiracy person, that's ridiculous. Except this person turned out to be what's known as a search angel.
This is what they call someone who understands how to research genealogy and by the grace of their own hearts helps people find their relatives. The search angel asked for access to my ancestry account so she could look around.
That was at 10.41 p.m. Minutes later, minutes later, she writes, okay, I believed I figured it out.
She says that she has found someone that I share a lot of DNA with, a very close relation. Then she says this, and I think this match is your half sister.
What the? I'm happy to walk it through with you. I'm sure this is all quite a shock.
Yeah, I'm shocked. I'm confused.
It doesn't make sense. I've just been trying to figure out why I'm half-Irish or whatever.
And all of a sudden, I have a half-sister? It's now 11.45 p.m. And I'm trying to slow this all down, trying to process this.
But my search angel keeps dropping bombs. She found my half-sister's Facebook page.
Her name is Tara Collins. So now, I mean, okay, search angel lady, I write, how did you find her? Three question marks.
On Ancestry, Tara had a tree labeled Collins Family Tree. From there, the search angel found her mother's name and then found her mother's obituary elsewhere online.
It's midnight. We're just going back and forth.
I asked for the obituary for Tara's mother. I background people for a living as a journalist, so I checked my search angel's work, and it was rock solid.
The woman who was showing up on my Ancestry.com account as my close family was indeed named Tara Collins. And my search angel said Tara Collins and I had too many DNA centimorgans in common to be anything other than half-siblings.
Centimorgans, I'm now learning,

are how genetic connections are measured. Thank you very much, I write the search angel.
I guess I'll reach out to her. I appreciate your help.
No problem, she wrote. I know it's all shocking, but I promise it gets better.
Tara Collins, turns out, is the coolest person I've ever encountered on the internet.

I loved her Instagram account.

Just beautiful pictures of plants and flowers and trees, thoughtful affirmations, whimsical pictures of friends.

I learned that she's an energy healer, a medium, and a mystic in Southern California. You're going to breathe in and breathe out.
Breathe in. It's now the middle of the night and I'm scrolling through everything she's ever posted.
I want you to feel the sensation as if your best friend is about to approach you. In one post, she wrote, I wish my life had background music so I could understand what the hell is going on.
Yeah, same. There was a picture of her at the beach in Bali, arms in the air, looking at the ocean.
And so it goes, she posted. I think, I love that Billie Joel song.
She certainly looked like she could be my sister. Same shape in the face, it seemed, and the eyes, maybe the coloring.
She posted a selfie taken at the end of a five-day silent meditation. She captioned it, here's your reminder that it is all a bit closer than you may think.
All I was thinking about was how much she looked like me in the photo. There was no question this was my half-sister.
I had just turned 40 less than three weeks earlier. I celebrated in Amsterdam with a bunch of friends.
Now, halfway through life, I was getting a half-sister. And as I keep scrolling, I find a series of Instagram posts showing Tara with a bunch of her friends blowing out her birthday candles, her 40th birthday candles.
My jaw fell to the freaking ground. So my half-sister is 18 days younger than me? How does that even happen? Tara posted often about her niece and nephew, her brother and father.
Was I related to them too?

My mom clearly didn't give birth 18 days after I was born.

And my mom is 100% my mom.

So does that mean Tara's father is my father?

Or could this mean that Warren was both a secret Irish guy living as a Jewish guy

and impregnating another woman within weeks of impregnating my mom?

Like, it didn't make any sense.

Thank you. both a secret Irish guy living as a Jewish guy and impregnating another woman within weeks of impregnating my mom.
Like it didn't make any sense. I went on to Ancestry.com and I sent Tara a quick note.
I was really vague so as not to scare her off with a word like half sister. I was probably too vague.
Hi, Ancestry.com indicates we may be first cousins. I'm doing some research on my genealogy and trying to figure out who may be family.
If you're also curious, let me know. Best, Matt.
She never wrote back. I sent her a private message on Instagram.
She never wrote back. I contacted her through her website.
She never wrote back. and so I did what you do when you're desperately trying to piece together some super crazy revelations about your siblings and maybe your father and maybe everything you ever knew about yourself.
I signed up for 23andMe, the other main DNA database. I spit in a cup, shipped it in, and six weeks later, after returning from my in-law's house in New Jersey, where we were breaking our fast for the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, I got an email from 23andMe.
Nothing about a father. But I was being alerted to a DNA match indicating I had a half-sister.
I figured Tara Collins signed up for this site too. Then I clicked through.
It was not Tara. It was someone completely different.
So I have two half-sisters? I messaged this sister immediately. This time, I was direct.

23andMe says, you're my half-sister. I would be very curious to chat.
Moments later, moments later, I'm still staring at my phone, and a message pops up. She responded.
She says she's been looking for me for years I've been on 23andMe for about five years now hoping to find someone like you you see my mom was artificially inseminated and so we never know who my dad was turns out we likely share a father I am so excited but I can guess this might be a lot for you to process. Her name is Helena.
What she's telling me in this moment, while I'm standing in the kitchen, putting away leftovers from my post-Yom Kippur meal, would keep me up nights, would set me down a strange and exciting path toward understanding who I am and where I came from. If you wish to know more, I'm very happy to tell you all I know.

Helena told me her story through a bunch of messages that night. She was in her 30s when she first learned that her parents had had trouble conceiving, so they went to a doctor in Manhattan.

It was the 70s, and the doctor was using donor sperm to get women pregnant.

Her mom later said she didn't know who the donor was and never had. When Helena was about six months old, her mother went back to the doctor who had helped her conceive.
Her mother introduced the doctor to baby Helena. Oh, I was hoping she would be his, the doctor said.
He is a very good-looking guy, although has bad acne. Could that guy, the very good-looking guy with acne, could he be my father? According to our DNA, it seemed he must be.
Over the next few days, Helena and I learned we had both lived in Philly at the same time. We had met our spouses there.
We had lived blocks from each other. Elena got married across the street from where my wife and I had our wedding rehearsal dinner.
And in the very spot in a park where we had taken our wedding pictures, we each had two kids, a boy and a girl. She asked, do you have super long fingers? Mine are like super duper long.
I'm also blind as a bat. Average length fingers here, but I'm also blind as a bat.
By the time we got in touch, Helena had already done a ton of research to try to find the identity of the donor, the man who apparently was also my biological father. She is undeniably smarter than me, a professor and PhD

in information systems. She clearly likes to solve puzzles, so she'd look at family trees

and obituaries of people who matched on 23andMe as our second or third Irish cousins.

And from there, she figured out that on one family line,

we came from the lynches of Macroom, County Cork, Ireland. When she told me this, I immediately Google imaged Macroom.
Lovely little pastoral place, old town with an old castle in the middle. I'm scrolling through these photos.
I see a church, beautiful, another church. And then I'm like, I wonder where the synagogue is, where my people would have gone.
So I keep scrolling and then I realize, wait a second, there is no synagogue because there were no Jews there because I'm not Jewish on that whole side of my family. Helena and I knew that one way to find our father would be by connecting with cousins with close DNA who would be willing to help us figure it out.
So we teamed up. Each time Helena identified a close relative on the DNA sites, I'd contact them.
She'd tell me what questions to ask. But inevitably, when they wrote back, they'd ask me what my father's name was.
And I would tell them, I don't know, and I'm actually looking for my father and hoping you can help me because I'm 45 and have these siblings and et cetera, et cetera. That would just shut them down.
They would ghost me, not return my messages. It was like they were thinking, oh, man, that sounds messy.
I don't want to get involved in that. I get it.
Yeah, it was messy. And all of that mess swirled in my head.
Warren, our father-son trips to the betting parlor, reuniting with him at Bennigan's while Kelly waited in the car. Him saying he wanted to punch Richard.
Him ghosting me again. And now DNA and sperm donors and finding an energy healer sister on Instagram and investigating my roots with another sister.
I knew who I needed to talk to next. I would let this settle and then I'd sit down with my mom.
Next time on Inconceivable Truth. I'll preface by saying that I love you very much for being my mom, obviously, and in reality, and then just going above and beyond my mom for the last 48 years and two months.
I have a couple of questions, and there's no judgment whatsoever. And my search for, search for my ancestry is not about, like, replacing you or dad at all.
I'm just, like, trying to figure out, like, you know, where I kind of came from. Inconceivable Truth is a production of Waveland and Rococo Punch.
I'm writer and host, Matt Katz. The story editor is Erica Lance, mixing by James Trout.
Emily Foreman is our producer. Natalie White is our intern.
Special thanks to WNYC archivist Andy Lancet. Our executive producers are Jason Hoke at Waveland and John Parati and Jessica Alpert at Rococo Punch.
For photos and more details in the series, follow at Waveland Media on Instagram, X or Facebook. And you can reach out via email at podcasts at Waveland.media.
There's a lot of swearing in your podcast. Thanks for listening.
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