“Whenever I asked her about it, there’d be a lot of pain on her...

“Whenever I asked her about it, there’d be a lot of pain on her face.  She’d look stricken almost.  As if I’d brought up some tragedy.  I assumed the worst.  I thought rape, or some awful thing.  So I just stopped asking, and I grew up without knowing anything about my father.  But toward the end of her life, I sat with her in the nursing home.  I told her: ‘You’ve been the perfect mother.  You did everything right.  I have no complaints.  But this might be the last time I can ask you, so I’d like to know: ‘What happened with my father?’  And she told me this story.  About a whirlwind romance with a Venezuelan computer scientist, who spoke several languages, and swept her off her feet, and then revealed he had a wife.  To be honest, I didn’t believe it.  It just didn’t seem scandalous enough to keep hidden for all those years.  And my mom had developed dementia, so I just assumed it was a story she was telling herself.  After her death, I uploaded my DNA to Ancestry, but found nothing interesting.  I resigned myself to never knowing.  Until last summer, when I finally got a match for a ‘first cousin.’  I sent the woman a message and told her everything I knew.  The details matched up.  And she confirmed my father was her uncle: Pedro Lance Machado.  Then she gave me the most wonderful news: I had six living brothers and sisters.  They called me one-by one.  None of the conversations were awkward.  And they all asked the same thing: ‘When’s the soonest we can meet?’  They flew from all over to celebrate my 51st birthday.  They brought all their old photos of my father.  We rented a house.  One of my sisters cooked ceviche and paella.  We played Latin music.  We told stories.  I was never made to feel like an interloper.  They never made me feel like anything but a gift.  Overnight, I went from an only child, to a member of the most beautiful family.”    
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