This DNA thing has been a waiting game. Order the kit- wait. Spit in a tube and drop it in the mail- wait. Get your results- FREAK OUT. Upload to GEDMatch- wait. Get mom tested- wait. Add like two more waits in there. I’m actually still currently waiting for three different things to process. Turns out this process is not for the impatient. It’s hard to be patient when it feels like each step just might be the step that gives me a piece of critical information to piece together the identity of my biological father.

As of this week, for the first time in my life I now KNOW something. Not just assume. I KNOW. I know my father is just a little under half Ashkenazi Jewish. I’ve never said anything about my father that included the word “know”. I always kind of assumed he had dark eyes since I am the only one in the family who has dark eyes. I figure he was short, since my mom is over 6′ tall, and I’m 5’4″. Part of me assumed he was a musician, since my mom was probably into that at the time. All of these things were speculation, daydreams, me piecing little tidbits of information together- but nothing concrete. Until now.

I was driving to Chipotle on December 15th when my first set of results came back. I glanced at my phone (at a stoplight, obvi) and I saw “Your AncestryDNA results are in!” My heart stopped. I pulled over.

My hands were shaking as I pulled up the website, logged in, and looked at the first data I had available. My ethnic background. 80% was completely as I expected. Western European- my German heritage was no mystery. The other 20% was completely new to me- Ashkenazi Jewish. My head swirled! I had always assumed I had some sort of hispanic background, but I was incorrect. My ancestry was also speckled with different areas of the Middle East. I felt exotic I finally had an answer to the question I had been asked since I was a teen- what are you?

My next step was uploading my raw data to a 3rd party site called GEDMatch. It’s a free service that regardless of which testing service you utilized, you can upload your results and have one big shared database, and access to more matches. My plan was to spread my “net” as far and wide as possible, and then (surprise, surprise) wait. The goal would be to have my contact information out there, and hopefully at some point a close relative such as a first cousin or sibling may eventually get tested and give me a close lead. This could be a process spanning years, but at least I was starting.

The GEDMatch upload took about 12 weeks to process, but it finally tokenized. It arranged a whole new set of matches for me to explore, and plopped one at the top, who I decided to reach out to. He had a website and a blog all dedicated to genealogy, so I thought he would be a good place to start. I sent a message introducing myself to this guy, and we did a little corresponding. He lives in Jerusalem. After a few emails, he asks where I was born and my maiden name. I tell him I was born Molly Melinat, in Fairbanks Alaska.

“Oh, I have a cousin in Alaska”