I’m an amateur genealogist. It’s important for me to keep up a family tree and I’ve even dug in a little into my roots (within the limits of the free trial period) on one or two of those sprawling online ancestry sites. It has struck me odd that a person would create a “tree” to show their “roots”. But it’s not really the same kind of tree. And perhaps a better way to look at it is that you are climbing up the tree to get a better look at things. Isolated facts mean nothing, usually, but from a bird’s eye view you can see a lot more.

I realize that when one starts poking around in the past, there’s always the potential of discovering something new – or even – secret. This very thing happened to writer Dani Shapiro after unceremoniously sending away for a DNA test when her husband suggested they take advantage of a BOGO offer. Shapiro thought she knew everything about her family – heck, she even wrote a memoir about her father and had done tons of family research. But then lo and behold, the results returned via email one day and left her completely discombobulated: her story was not what she thought it was and she had the DNA to prove it. She tells that story in her book Inheritance. Since then, she has created a podcast called Family Secrets, where many MANY other people divulge their secrets, also revealed by DNA tests, or by some other fate that led them to question their own status quo.

So, a couple of months ago, I sent away my own DNA sample. It’s as simple as spitting in a tube – and paying a “nominal” fee. I really wasn’t expecting any book deals out of my results and, sure enough, I had paid to find out that I know – as Ken Jeong of The Masked Singer would put it – EXACTLY WHO I AM. No surprises, no secrets. In fact, the results pinpointed the two exact origins of both my father’s and my mother’s families in Poland and Ukraine respectively.

The particular genealogy sites I perused this past year had very little to offer me, first because only a couple other distant family members have surrendered their DNA – at least to those particular sites – so there’s no benefit to be gained from cross referencing. Secondly, since I don’t speak or read the languages very well, I can’t glean any info from the historical records from that part of the world. (That being said, I haven’t tried very hard yet, either.)

What I do have is geography – which actually determines a lot. I mean if my ancestors had not both moved to Canada – Alberta-Derwent (or thereabouts), my parents would never have met and – well, you can follow the bouncing ball. In the “old country” they would have lived about 4 hours apart – in today’s standards of car and highway – and probably would never have traversed either the geographical or cultural boundaries at the time. Plus – they didn’t have any dating apps, so…yeah.

It’s not only geography that determines what kind of trees can grow, but also what kind of family trees.