I've been watching Finding Your Roots on PBS and I wonder. I probably wonder because my siblings are always after me for telling their secrets -- or outing other family members (like I did with my dad). They are upset because they did not know or suspected or maybe because they do not want to know.
How long can you keep a secret? As long as one other person knows -- not long.
Carly Simon's grandmother told her she would never know -- probably because her grandmother did not know. Mr. Gates found out that Carly Simon and her family were considered black; they already knew they were from Cuba. Maybe that is the secret that her grandmother kept from her; that she was black. According to the DNA test, Carly and her family were more black than they (or she) thought. DNA will tell the truth when people want to keep their history secret -- or at least out of the hands of the family that write about it (as in my case).
In my case, I already knew I had some black relatives. I'd heard the story that once upon a time a slave ran away from his master and the Cherokee adopted him. The Cherokee people (or nation) were always adopting others, including runaway slaves. I'll bet there was no Emancipation Proclamation freeing the runaway slaves adopted by the Cherokee; the runaway slave was already free -- he had run away and been adopted by the Cherokee people. No Emancipation Proclamation needed to free him; he was already free.
My great grandmother was born Cherokee and is on the Cherokee rolls, so I am quarter Cherokee anyway. My youngest sister did a DNA test and found out that she is descended from an
African. It shows up in the DNA.
I remember Mom taunting Dad with her sharp tongue. There was a painting or portrait of a black man in an attic in someone's (a relative's home) and she had seen it. Could it have been of the runaway slave adopted into the Cherokee nation? I never saw the portrait, but I already knew about the tale of the runaway slave who had been adopted by the Cherokee. No surprise to me. Evidently, it was a surprise to my sister when it showed up on the DNA test.
A lot of things my siblings find so difficult to understand is why and how I can open myself up by writing about my life and the experiences I've had over the years. BB is so afraid that people will talk about her, so me talking (or rather writing) about her (and the family) is a faux pas too far.
So why bother getting your DNA since everything about your history is in your blood.
Or rather their blood.
It could be why BB does not want to get her CNA tested and find out for sure. The things I know about this family and about them is a scratch on the surface compared to giving up blood or sitting into a test tube to find out your DNA.
I wonder how Mom, especially considering she was a racist, and had racists in her family, dealt with that news? Since she married Dad and had decided he was going to marry her when she was eleven years old and met him for the first time, being prejudiced would prove a sticking point but not much of a sticking point since she married him anyway. The strange thing is that Dad was also prejudiced -- something I didn't know until he flipped out when JC, my brother's only son, wanted to take Ebony, a black girl, to the high school prom. I never realized that Dad was prejudiced until that time. I always thought Dad was a good man, an honest man, but never considered him prejudiced. It was a secret he kept to himself -- much like the fact that he was also a homosexual. I knew about that because I discovered that tidbit of information in the middle of the night when I was up watching La Cage aux Folles (the French version on HBO) and Dad was up to watch the movie. I had heard the stories about Dad's extracurricular activities and had discounted them until that night. I forgot about all that because I had put it out of my mind, pooh-poohed the tales, and went on with my life. It was not the ah-ha moment I had when I discovered that Rock Hudson was gay. I took the news as a shock to my soul. Less shocking was that Jim Nabors and several other father figures (Dick Sergent, Robert Reed, and so on -- including these actors). Who surprised you? I will bet it wasn't Paul Lynde or Liberace. I knew about Tab Hunter the same way I finally found out about Rock Hudson (no, it wasn't because I guessed but because I read it in the tabloids.)
I think Rock Hudson had to come out because he contracted AIDS/HIV. Hudson was also linked with Jim Nabors which was also tabloid fodder, but Nabors died in Honolulu and was married to Stan Cadwallader, with whom he had been living for over 30 years (38 years to be exact). Turns out both actors kept away from each other (Hudson & Nabors) in order to keep from being outed. They were just friends.
In the end, that is all. Disperse.
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