What Makes Me Me

I can't help but become sentimental when it comes to uncovering the secrets that lead to who you are.

Where did that strawberry blonde hair come?  Why do I rub my two fingers together?  Who was left-handed in the family that one takes after?  Why does my sister have thick hair and I have thin hair?  What about those idiosyncrasies?  Where in heaven’s name did those come from?

It’s fun to locate pictures of our ancestors, but those pictures are black and white and leave much to the imagination or yet to be discovered.   Certainly no home movies were left behind to validate information.  We can only rely on what an elder in the family remembers or what we find in cousins that we meet along the way. 

Only through meticulously researching the past are we able to uncover those long hidden secrets.

Let’s start at the beginning.  I have four children, two of them, a son and a daughter have strawberry blonde hair.  In the winter it's tends to be a darker blonde, but in the summer it lightens up to the strawberry blonde.  My mother’s side of the family had red hair and I always assumed that was where it came from.  

My husband’s mother was adopted.  Her birth mother died of TB at a very young age.  After researching his maternal birth grandmother’s side of the family we actually met some of his cousins, who much to our surprise had strawberry blonde hair.  We also discovered from the adoption papers that his maternal grandmother was a southpaw.  My husband was born left-handed but was trained to use his right hand.  Today he is ambidextrous.  Our daughter with the strawberry blonde hair is also left-handed. 

Strange how I rub my first and second fingers together, especially when riding in a car.  Never really paid much attention to it until others pointed it out.  Come to find out my dad performed this habit on a daily basis, and his father before him.  Recently I discovered I have a daughter who also inherited this feat.

These are just a few of the miracles of DNA that I have uncovered.  What can you find?

Names, dates, and places are the first things we discover.  Then we find pictures and cousins, sometimes simultaneously.  Then the personal side of what makes us who we are. Who we look like, the talents, personality, traits and habits we inherit that make us who we are, are some of the most fascinating discoveries of all.