It Happened To Me: I Found Out My Family Doctor Was Secretly My Biological Father
PLUS: Free stuff from Jane!
Hi again!
That means “hi again since this morning” for a bunch of you but also “hi again decades later!” to all the new AJPT subscribers who were Jane magazine readers and just found us here (thanks, Threads and others!). I could not be more excited to reunite with you. You look great and welcome welcome welcome back! I’m excited for you old AJPT people on here too but you already know I love you, I tell you all the time, and it’s not about you right now so just pipe down and welcome the new kids in the comments, please.
First, a question: If there are any Jane magazine or Sassy magazine features you remember and want me to revive here, just let me know and I will. I have recently gotten a number of requests to bring back the Jane Makeunders, so I am on top of that one. What else, if anything?
Now here is where I feel like I invited you over to my house (which does happen and will again soon for our next Controversial-Books-Only Book Club party, which you can attend in person - including snacks and drinks on me! - or virtually -also fun!). But today in particular I feel awkwardly like I invited you over and then it’s a cash bar. That’s because today’s post is paywalled partway through. Oy, dilemma.
Here are my workaround ideas for you:
If you already dove right in and became a paying subscriber, bless you, I know who you are, and I bet you probably have very healthy longterm relationships overall and fewer problems with trust than I do. (By the way, I had trouble with the concept of charging people to read any AJPT pieces when we launched, but then realized it was the only way to get the writers paid and so my partner in crime here Charlie talked me down and we decided to charge the least possible for a monthly subscription, which is the exact same as the cost of an issue of Sassy in today’s dollars - and that’s original not Ebay prices.) Thank you paying subscribers for keeping us alive and carry on! I love you and appreciate you! If you're a free subscriber, you’re also awesome and following are some ways to read this stuff without paying.
Scroll down and read all the free articles. We have over 500 all-exclusive articles on AJPT and I would say that at least 470 of them are good! And a bunch of even the good ones are free. So enjoy all of those or tell me in the comments why you don’t (I live for negative feedback too).
I'm also going to make these SIX hand-selected-for-you posts that were paywalled FREE for a whole month because I’m so happy to see you again and it’s the least I can do:
The one and only Christina Kelly on menopause.
Cat Marnell on me.
Rain Phoenix’s It Happened To Me on her brother, River.
Jane magazine’s Esther Haynes on creepy behind the scenes happenings in the Jane offices.
You can also binge one of our riveting (if I do say so myself) episodic series like this one or this one without having to wait the week or two that we all did between installments.
Even better, if you’re up for it, I activated the seven-day free trial so you can use that whenever you hit an annoying paywall and read anything and everything here. Then at the end of the seven days if you don’t think it’s worth it to pay, just cancel (set a reminder if you’re like me and may forget) and come back by taking out another free subscription. I want you here either way (and don’t you ever leave me again!).
Whatever you do, please get into the comments. Remarkable reunions keep happening there between readers and editors from Sassy and Jane and even our red-headed stepchild XOJane (to be clear, I love redheads - maybe unwisely even dyeing mine the day of my first photo shoot for Sassy). And if you ever ask or tell me anything in comments, it’s embarrassing how fast I will respond. But now I’m at the point where I asked you over and not only is it a cash bar but I’m going around asking for charitable donations. So let me stop here and say how much I deeply appreciate being back together with you. It’s overwhelming in the best way.
Love always,
Jane
By Sherri Bale
Your 23 & Me results are ready!
It was 2019. I had purchased a $69 gift for myself.
As a practicing geneticist who performs DNA-based diagnostics in a medical setting daily, this would be my first experience with recreational DNA testing. I clicked the link and was off on a busman’s holiday.
A pie diagram confirmed what I already knew. I was ¼ Irish and ¾ Ashkenazi Jewish. Nothing new there, or so I thought.
Next to do: See if 23 & Me had identified any of my relatives. I was an only child, but I knew my cousins on my mother’s side, the Abrahamsons. We all lived within an hour’s drive, and our reunions occasionally resulted in a visit from the police or a trip to the ER. My people were regular folk, at the lower end of the middle class. They drank some beer, got rowdy, and had seltzer and snowball fights. The women were homemakers, the men salesmen or tradesmen. Most in my parents’ generation had finished high school, but none had gone to college.
“Dr. Klein was three decades older than my mom. He made house calls often.”
My same-age cousins talked of the Red Sox, the Bruins, clothes, drinking, and parties. School was only of minor interest to them. I was the odd one. They called me “the smart cousin” – the good student and avid reader who was planning to be a doctor or a scientist.
23 & Me had identified some relatives, but the only ones I recognized were from my mother’s side. I hadn’t expected to find any first-cousins on my dad’s side (the Gluckmans, Jews who had immigrated from Romania), because, although the family was pretty extensive, he was the only child of his parents to have had a child. But I was surprised not to see any aunts, uncles, or even second and third cousins.
Perhaps the Gluckman family members had sent their samples to a different DNA testing company, like Ancestry or MyHeritage, instead of 23 & Me. I decided to send my sample to those, as well. Ancestry identified a few Irish relatives from my mother’s father’s side (Crosby), and l learned more than I needed to know about my estranged grandfather. But still no Gluckman relatives.
Both 23 & Me and Ancestry.com had identified many people they classified as my 2nd cousins, all of whom were related to each other and also to me. I recognized none of them. One of those individuals, a woman my age who lived in Boston, had assembled an extensive family tree, and I shared DNA with many of the members of her family. They were Ashkenazi Jews, whose ancestors (The Kleins) came to Boston from Hungary in the late 1880s. Being from Western Massachusetts, I was intrigued and examined the Klein tree closely. I saw that Bernard Klein, my family doctor, was a member of this family. My doctor had a brother, and his grandson had done DNA testing. It said this man was my first-cousin once removed. I was confused.
”How, exactly, had this happened? An affair? Artificial (and illegal at the time) insemination?”
Actually, I was only confused for an hour. I am a geneticist, after all. It was clear why I had no Gluckman relatives. I was not a Gluckman. It was equally clear why I had so many Klein relatives. I was a member of the Klein family. Specifically, my family doctor was my father.
To continue reading to the end of Shari’s story, and to see a picture of her with her doctor/biological dad, subscribe here or use one of those tricks I taught you in my intro. Thank you so much either way!
