Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love

by Dani Shapiro

“It can be very traumatic,” I said. “To not know. And then to find out.”

But gratitude and trauma weren’t mutually exclusive.

It is a measure of true adulthood that we are able to imagine our parents as the people they may have been before us.

Regardless, it was still stunning that part of our lives was over, sealed like a time capsule containing grainy documentary footage, a yellowed tallis, silver, filigreed tallis clips, and framed photographs of the people I had once believed were ours.

There could be confusion in that—or liberation. The choice was mine.

In Hebrew the word for soul is neshama. It is variously translated as wind, or breath. Try to capture it and it disappears.

I was connected to him on the level of neshama, which had nothing to do with biology, and everything to do with love.

I was beginning to see the danger in adhering to a single narrative, hewing to a story.