I took a DNA genetic assay as a joke, looking for distant relatives, only to be told I had a daughter—even though I had never been pregnant.
I had never considered myself a lonely woman until I lost my husband at 57. Thomas and I had both been human rights attorneys, and our passion for our cause had been all-absorbing.
We met in college at a student protest and fell in love at first sight. Over the next thirty-five years, we occasionally thought about having children, but then another cause would appear, and the baby project would be set aside another year.
The decades followed each other faster than I thought possible, and one day, having a baby was no longer possible—but we could still adopt. Tom and I had started the adoption process when he died.
I was in the office, going over a last-ditch maneuver to save a teen on death row when the phone rang. I picked it up, irritated at the interruption.
“This had better be good!” I snapped.
“Mrs. Weaver?” The quiet voice on the line raised the hairs on the back of my neck. “It’s about your husband, Mr. Thomas Weaver…”
I let the phone slip from my nerveless fingers, drowning out the sympathetic voice and all the futile explanations. Tom was gone. That big, brave heart had failed.
“I’m alone,” I whispered. “I’m all alone.”
While Tom had been raised by loving parents, I had been shuffled from one foster home to another until I aged out of the system. But my brilliant mind and tenacity had gotten me to college, and then law school.
There is always something inside us that calls us to where we are meant to be.
Now when I got home, there was no more Tom to share a glass of wine with over takeout pasta, no one to argue heatedly over the issues we were defending, no one to reach for in that cold empty bed.
The terrible feeling of being sundered, less than a whole person that I’d felt all my life had vanished when I met Tom—but now that terrible loneliness was consuming my life.
I increased my office hours, poured myself into more cases until one day I simply collapsed in the middle of an impassioned closing, arguing in defense of a young homeless mother who had killed the social worker who had tried to take her baby. The woman of steel was no more.
After a long convalescence, I finally took stock of my life. I was now just 60, too young to retire but also not strong enough to practice law like I used to.
What could I do? Teach? I contacted the prestigious law school Tom and I had attended and cadged an offer to lecture a few hours a week. That was something! I’d be active, useful, and surrounded by bright young minds!
Teaching helped, but at the end of the day, I was alone, sitting up in bed watching late-night TV—bad late-night TV! Later I would attribute what happened next to that late-night talk show and its ditzy guests.
It was 2 a.m., and a big Black woman in a massive wig was interviewing a thin white one with almost no hair. Their mouths were opening and closing soundlessly, and at last, I relented and turned up the volume.
“…my mother,” said the thin white woman, wiping at her rabbit-pink eyes. “I asked her, but the truth is she didn’t know…”
The Black hostess turned incredulous eyes toward the camera before looking back at her guest. “Honey, your mama didn’t know who her baby-daddy was?”
The thin woman blushed—or rather, she broke out in ugly red blotches.
“My mother had some godless years, Mavis, but she’s walking with the Lord now!”
“Amen!” cried Mavis enthusiastically, then she asked, “But how did she not know?”
“It was those Woodstock days, Mavis,” said the woman. “People were sinning and following the ways of the devil and indulging their flesh…”
“But you found your father,” Mavis interrupted before the thin woman started preaching. “How did that come about?”
“Well, my son sent in my DNA and my husband’s as a Christmas present. And I can tell you, Mavis, I was mad… Some mysteries belong to the Lord…”
“Yes, yes,” said Mavis impatiently. “We all know that, but how did you find your daddy?”
“They sent us this report, Mavis, and there it was as bold as brass: Sturgis Lee Kersey. And seven more names of siblings—brothers and sisters, you know? You could have knocked me over with a feather…”
At that moment, Mavis gestured, and I saw a smartly dressed girl usher in eight scrawny people—obviously the thin woman’s long-lost relatives.
“This is where I get off!” I muttered and switched off the TV.
But the blotchy face of the thin woman kept rising in front of my eyes, and those purple cracked lips said, “I wanted to know where I come from, and how come he didn’t love me.”
I got up, went to the bathroom, turned on the lights, and looked in the mirror. I whispered, “I want to know where I come from, and how come she didn’t love me.”
The next day, I decided to search and learn more about my own roots.
After doing a considerable amount of research, I settled on a company that seemed to be the most reliable. I ordered the DNA test, took the cheek swab, and sent it off.
A month later, I received the results. One part was a bewildering flood of information about my ethnic heritage, but in another section of the report, I saw the words ‘49.96% match’ with the photo of a redhead young woman whom the company identified as Michelle Simpson, 33—my daughter.
“My daughter?” I whispered. “I don’t have a daughter. I don’t have any children whatsoever!” I sent off a blistering email, accusing the company of incompetence and threatening all kinds of legal mayhem.
The company replied to me through the telephone a few days later.
“Mrs. Weaver,” the smooth-voiced man on the other side said. “We’ve consulted our technical team, and faced with your assertion that you have never been pregnant or given birth, they offer the possibility of you having an identical twin.”
“An identical twin?” I gasped, flabbergasted.
“But… Oh my God! I was raised in the foster system… I had no idea…”
So I sent Michelle Simpson a personal message through the heritage website and received an excited reply which included a phone number and a suggestion we meet up.
I agreed, and two days later I walked into a restaurant toward a table where a slim redhead was sitting. The woman, Michelle, tried to get up but sank back down in her chair, white as a ghost.
“You…” she whispered.
“You look just like mom. Exactly, that hairstyle, the type of clothes… you even walk like her!”
“Michelle?” I asked hesitantly. “Your mom, she was in foster care too?”
Michelle shook her red curls.
“No! Mom was adopted when she was two. She had no memories of her mother, but she had a hard time adapting. So later on, my grandparents didn’t encourage her to find her biological family.”
“Your mother…” I said. “She’s my twin. Have you told her? Does she know?”
Michelle nodded.
“Yes, she knows. She’s scared though. She didn’t want me to do this. She didn’t want to know why her mother had abandoned her.”
“Abandoned us,” I said. “She abandoned us, and she let us be separated.” Michelle lifted her cell phone and took a snap of me. She typed out a quick message and sent it.
“Sit!” said Michelle. “Tell me about yourself!”
“I’m a lawyer,” I said. “And a widow. I have no children, I have no one, which is why I sent in my DNA…” But Michelle was gazing over my shoulder and her face broke into a wide smile.
“Mom,” she cried. “Come and meet Dorothy.”
I got up on trembling legs and turned around to face myself.
“Dorothy?” my other self whispered, “I’m Susan.”
I didn’t even think. I just stretched out my arms and threw them around Susan. I discovered that I was crying—but it was okay, because Susan was crying too, and so was Michelle.
“I always felt there was something wrong with me, a part of me missing,” sobbed Susan.
“Me too!” I said. “As if only half my heart was working…”
“Now we are together!” said Susan. We turned radiant faces toward Michelle and smiled identical smiles. Even our hair was cut the same way, and we were both wearing similar outfits.
Susan—who practiced family law—explained that she had been married to Michelle’s father for over fifteen years before the relationship fell apart. She and the teenaged Michelle had left Florida and decided to start life over in Denver, Colorado—which happened to be where I was living!
Michelle had married and had four children.
“So you are a grandmother!” I cried enviously. “Tom and I kept putting off having children, we thought we had forever… And then it was too late and now I’m alone.”
“No, you are not!” said Susan fiercely. “You have me and Michelle, and her husband and her kids… You will never be alone again!”
So I ended up with a big family and lots of grand-nieces and nephews who looked just like me. As Susan and I got to know each other better, we discovered that we had eerie parallels in our lives and identical tastes.
Since we were both alone, we ended up moving in together, and I spoil Susan’s grandchildren shamelessly.
What can we learn from this story?
- It is never too late to reach out and find our loved ones. I had never imagined I had an identical twin, a person who shared my DNA, and through her, I gained a big family.
- There is always something inside us that calls us to where we are meant to be. Some mystical connection led Susan to move to the city where I was living and led to our finding each other.
This account is inspired by our reader’s story and written by a professional writer. Any resemblance to actual names or locations is purely coincidental. All images are for illustration purposes only.