07/04/2023

In Limbo

In March I celebrated my 29th birthday and participated in a new Emerick family tradition, taking a DNA test. 

That might sound like an odd way to celebrate one’s birthday, but let me explain.

In December of 2021, my husband Justice decided to learn more about his ancestry. The Emerick family tree is somewhat nonexistent on my husband’s side, layers of adoptions and poorly documented immigration paths have created a hodgepodge quilt of ancestry that is equally confusing and addictive to research. 

Upon receiving his results, Justice was surprised to learn how strong his Italian and British heritage was. We tracked family members across every corner of the United States, from Arizona to New York family seemed to sprout up all over the place. When it came to my turn, my expectations were low. Truthfully, I mostly just wanted confirmation that my husband and I weren’t related by some freakish off-chance.

My known family history in comparison to Justice’s was pretty uninteresting. Dad’s family was Australian for generations, having immigrated from the UK before the 20th century. Mum’s family history was more recent, coming over to Victoria in the 1950s after turbulent upbringings in Europe during the second world war. Nobody talked much about what my maternal grandparents had experienced, all I knew was that being a kid during the war had been pretty horrible. When WWII ended, my grandparents were only 9 and 16 years old; too young to make sense of it and too old to know any different. 

Justice and I made guesses about what my ancestry results would look like. Just how German and Hungarian was I? Would I be able to find any cousins in Europe with as much ease as Justice had? What if this, what if that?

My DNA results came back rather vague, being born in Australia and testing DNA in an American-saturated place will do that, I’ve learned. There were no close relations in the database, leaving me with estranged family members that were distantly related through great-great-grandparents mostly. However, the most shocking information to come back was that I had utterly no German DNA. Zilch. After some digging into family records and the history of the wavering German border during the world wars, I found that I have roots in old Prussia and Poland.

Truthfully, none of this information matters in the present.

While preserving family history is something I value greatly, it took me a minute to try to understand why I was so invested in it. I dug into the National Archives of Australia, specifically looking for my Oma’s immigration details but all I could find was the ship name that she arrived on, nothing like the paper trail that belonged to my Nagypapa and Dad’s side. When I looked further into that the timeline of how my maternal grandparents made it to Australia it became clear. One came through Italy in 1950, the other through England in 1956, and everything before that was tied to verbal family history that died with them. 

Part of me wanted to know more, desperately. As someone who thrives with context and knowing all the facts, it felt surreal and infuriating to be finding tidbits of information here and there. I was in some sort of ancestral limbo. I dove down rabbit holes and chased leads, even going so far as to reach out to third or fifth cousins with affiliated surnames, only to be solicited self-authored books on Christian values. 

I’ve come to accept that shame and trauma held a big role in the narratives that my maternal grandparents were willing to share when they were alive. All I can really hold on to of them is my memory of them, like the way my Nagypapa would slip me a bright gold fifty-dollar note every once in a while and cheekily advise me “Don’t tell your mada,” in his thick accent. Or the way my Oma would teach me how to pull silly faces using all my fingers, it was as unsightly as you might imagine but it made us laugh hysterically.

When I look at the life I’m building with Justice and the challenges we’ve faced together so far, I become more and more convinced that part of my strength must come from the people before me. The way my parents and their parents have responded to life’s challenges and looked out for one another in the process. It has become a learned behaviour in both of our families to stick by the people in your life and navigate problems as a team. 

At the end of last year, Justice and I decided that living in the United States isn’t working for us. Our goal for this year has been to find our way to Australia, which has so far involved navigating the extensive paperwork that comes with documenting an international relationship and repairing the damages that last year’s hurricane left on our house – by no means fun, but necessary, unfortunately. 

As we venture into this next chapter of challenges, we’re quietly hopeful. Our time in our little teal house now has an expiration date which is equally exciting and terrifying. We suddenly have plans that are bigger than ordinary day-to-day tasks. It’s almost like we’re operating with a secret “other” life in mind. The one that our thirty-something selves will get to enjoy once we get through our present. 

When I think about our journey like that, I think about the way it connects me to generations of people who were just trying to do their best with what they had available to them. In the end, isn’t that what we’re all just trying to do?

This month, I encourage you to think about the ways you can push yourself to do your best.

Food For Thought

What's a goal you've set for yourself this year and how is it going?
Email me your answer.

“May you respond to yourself with kindness, in good times and in hard times”
―Sharon Salzberg