The window thawed by Mike Spotswood

At a very early age I was looking through a frosted window knowing that this feeling within my soul told me something was missing something I couldn’t see but I could feel. Looking at my family I was that square peg that did not fit the family mold. I was that person who took that fork in the road that my family members couldn’t understand, yes the rebel within.  The dynamics of families can be complicated, and if I had known this I would have put on a hefty pair of waders to navigate the swollen and swift stream I was about to encounter. I can remember as a youth celebrating my Irish family heritage in Tipperary Hill Syracuse NY, and dressing in green from head to toe on St Patricks Day. There was my Polish mother who was a war bride after leaving Russia as a prisoner of a labor camp. I loved my pirogies, and kolache’s a fantastic Polish dessert. I was that flamboyant kid who loved color and  dressing as I was about to do a screen test in Hollywood totally confusing my very conservative family. I remember looking into the mirror, and wondering why I was so much taller than my brother who was only ten months younger than me.

I was very adventurous, and after graduating from high school at sixteen years old I wanted a new adventure it was off to Hollywood with my best friend Rita, and youth at that time was a fresh white canvas to paint my life’s journey on. After a year in LA I had the desire to return back to NY. Like many young people I had a few jobs telephone operator, hospital aid, and that’s where I found my passion to become a nurse. I had a daughter such a precious gift of life that this time grounded me. There still was that void that remained that could not be defined or filled. 

I met my husband Mike , and he was like a spinning top I never knew where her was going to land but his curiosity and embrace of life was parallel to mine, and we formed a tight bond into a family.  Like most people life was a predictable hi-way with our daughter’s soccer games and  the traditional family Sunday dinners. My mother who was the rock in our family died at a very young age from a rare disease called Shy-Draggers. We made her a promise that we would find her brother Teddy whom she was separated from after they were released from slave labor camps in Siberia. The United States negotiated with Russia for the release of Polish prisoners.

 After a very tough winter in NY, and being hit twice by other vehicles we decided to move South. Mike left his job from a local tv station, and took a job in Tampa at a local tv station there. We were known as the gypsies in the family, and Mike then took a job with the Federal Government. In the year 2000 we headed to Frankfurt Germany with AFN Armed Forces Network. I had a picture of my uncle Teddy that was sent to my mother just after the war had ended by my uncle Teddy. My mother and her brother lost contact shortly after this picture was sent. We were living in a hotel apartment outside of Frankfurt and during breakfast the hotel owner passed the picture around, and a guest said that is Trafagler Square in London.

After locating uncle Teddy in London, and his surprise to finally finding family we flew off to London to reunite. Uncle Teddy has passed away, but in his absence I now have a wonderful cousin, and his daughters. John and family visit us each year in the USA, and we often visit them in London. Again life has become a true adventure with unexpected surprises. After our three year tour in Germany we returned to the USA, and continued our Federal employment. life again was on a steady track and years passed before I experienced the shock of my now mundane life.

Three letters changed my life, and I’m sure tens of thousands of lives. Those three letters are DNA. My daughter for Christmas got me a DNA kit. Now the surprise of my life was reveled in the results I received from this test. Cousins who I grew up with were no longer blood relatives. My two brothers, and sisters were now half brothers and sisters. I was no longer Irish, I was now 53% Italian, and zero percent Irish., and I wonder after traveling to Italy twenty seven years in a row how that happened? Through many months of research I found out I was the oldest of eight half brothers and sisters. 

I’m sure there are many people like me who were surprised by their DNA results. I found a new brother who I became very close to. Finally that missing piece, that haunting feeling within me is finally solved through those tree letters DNA has set me free.that square beg now fits in the whole of two families that has renewed my life, and taught me the power of love and acceptance.