Mark's Story

Growing up with a "normal" Midwestern upbringing, Mark never felt different or disconnected from his family. However, after his father's death, a quest to explore his Portuguese heritage through a DNA test led to the staggering discovery that he was 100% Iberian and had zero Polish blood. Now, he shares his journey of navigating this new reality, confronting a mother whose memories are fading, and connecting with a biological family he never knew existed.

Mark can be reached via email markthenpe@gmail.com

Resources Mentioned:

Right to Know 

Severance Magazine 

DNA Surprises with Alexis Hourselt

NPE Stories Patreon

NPE Stories facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/NPEstories

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Maybe your parent isn't who you think it is. And that is when it finally hit. Half an hour, 45 minutes later, it finally dawned on me that maybe what's going on here is that my dad is not my father.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Hello, you are listening to NPE Stories. This is a podcast where NPEs can share their story. I am your host, Lily, and I found out I was an NPE through an ancestry DNA test that changed my life forever. NPE is a term that stands for not parent-expected or non-paternal event. This means that one or more of our parents are not who we believe them to be. NPE Stories is a podcast where NPEs can share their story of what their original family was like, how they found out they were an NPE, and what their journey has been like since the day they found out. Hello. Some of you listening have just found out that you were an NPE. And I'm so sorry. This is incredibly overwhelming. For most of us it is. Some of us would even say it's traumatic. But I've also heard people say that this makes sense and that they're even excited about this. I just Googled, my dad is not my dad. And thankfully, the term NPE now shows up in the search results near the top. This is going to be so helpful for you on your journey. That term did not show up for us, you know, five, even ten years ago. If you have known you were an NPE for a while, you know we have really had to work to grow this community. We've made forums, Facebook groups, social media pages. Now there are books, so many podcasts, and we are finding more and more resources for our community. If you just found out, try Googling, looking around. You will find resources that help you. I also love the Right to Know website and Severance website. There's articles on the Severance magazine online that are very helpful. And the Right to Know page, I'll put the link for the podcast down below. They are they have started to compile resources. Do you know there are now 29 podcasts that are somehow related to being an NPE or DNA surprises or for our assisted reproductive community or even the adoptee community? So we are growing and growing, and there are more resources available. I'm sorry for what you are going through if you just found out, but know that you are not alone. So feel your feelings, keep listening, keep reading, and I'm thinking of you. Thanks for tuning in today. Welcome to episode 238. Today I'm speaking with Mark. Hi, Mark.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Hi, Lily.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

Hi, how's your weekend going?

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Not too bad. It's a little dreary. We've had some schizophrenic weather here in Kansas City. It'd be 80 degrees one day and then, you know, wintry mix the next. It's been it's been decent this weekend at least.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Oh, nice. Okay, so Kansas City, you you consider yourself a Midwesterner then, just like me, is that I do.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

Well, thank you so much for setting time aside to do this today.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Well, thank you. I appreciate the uh forum you give to NPEs to tell their stories.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

Oh, thank you. Well, let's go ahead and get into your story today. So, Mark, you know how this works. Why don't you start with your family of origin and a little bit about what your childhood was like, and we'll take it from there.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Okay. Uh my story starts on the East Coast in New Bedford, Massachusetts, which is on the South Coast. My uh my dad, I'll refer to him, my my birth certificate father is my dad. My dad's family is Polish. His parents came over from Poland in the late 1800s. He was born in the mid-30s. He was the youngest of seven siblings, I think six of whom lived to adulthood. When he was um a teenager, his uh his his father left. He took up with another woman and left the family. So my dad had to drop out of school to help to work to help support the family. He got his GED, but he never went to college, which frankly is unfortunate. He was very smart, had a very analytical mind. I think he would have made a great engineer or something like that. But he never had either the resources or or drive or whatever to do that. He had some various jobs over time. He was in the Army for a couple of years before he finally settled on a career in uh purchasing. He was a purchasing agent for uh various companies, a job I don't think he ever really enjoyed. My my mom, uh her family is Portuguese. Uh she was the uh product of a fling that her mother had with an older man who was married, separated, divorced. It's kind of hard. I'm not a little fuzzy as to exactly what his status was at the time. There was a hastily arranged marriage about five months before my mom was born in the mid-1940s. Her parents were together for about a year and a half before they uh separated. I don't think my mother's childhood was particularly happy. Um, her mother was uh a difficult woman. I don't think she ever really wanted to have kids, in all candor, and I think she kind of took that out a little bit on my mom. Uh, but my mom did have a good support system. She had an aunt and uncle she was very close to. She had another aunt and uncle who had four daughters, and they were all of similar age, and they all kind of grew up together. My parents met in the mid-60s and they got married in 1967. I don't think the families were uh necessarily wild about it. These were the days that, you know, New Bedford was kind of an ethnic place, maybe still is. And in those days, a Polish guy was supposed to marry a Polish girl, and a Portuguese girl was supposed to marry a Portuguese guy. And that didn't happen. So I think there was some tension as far as that went. But they got married. I came along in 1972. My little sister came along in 1977. In 1979, we moved to the Midwest to small town Missouri. My dad got a job out in the Midwest. For your listeners who may be too young, the late 70s was a very difficult time economically, a lot of unemployment and inflation and all that. And so uh his company, the company he worked for, went under. He found a job in the Midwest, and we moved, we moved out there. My childhood was pretty normal. I had a pretty basic small town, middle class, lower middle class upbringing. I've listened to practically all of your episodes. Uh I've listened to uh episodes of DNA surprises, Alexis Hersalt. Those both your shows have been very helpful during this process. But it seems that maybe 90% of your guests tell the same story about feeling different or disconnected or out of place. Uh, they looked different, they felt different. Comments about being the milkman's kid, right? I never once felt that ever. I never felt out of place. I never felt different. I always felt loved and supported. I I look like my mother, which I never thought was odd, and nobody else ever commented it uh about it, at least didn't comment about it to me that it was strange. I know plenty of people who, you know, they favor one parent or the other and how they look. So so I never I never felt felt any of that. I never thought that my parents got along particularly well. Uh there was always this uh this underlying tension, which I understand now, knowing what I know, but at the time I thought it had to do with money. You know, my my my dad, my dad was 11 years older than my mother, and uh he was a very old-fashioned guy. He, you know, he thought that you know he was the one who ought to be uh, you know, the the breadwinner, you know, and and my mother shouldn't work. The problem was he never really made enough money in his jobs to do the kind of things that my parents wanted to do. And so I think that caused some problems and it caused some some sniping between the two. And I think they you know kind of treated each other shabbily at times. From a very early age, they would both come to me and complain about the other, which always was a tough spot to be in. So, as I said, I grew up in this small town, went to high school, I went off to college and to law school. Uh, I lived in Chicago for a few years and then moved to Kansas City about 20 years ago, where I live now with my wife and my two children. So that's that's the backstory.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

It sounds like you never had any warning signs that you were an NPE when you were a child.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Zero. Not I mean, never I never once. I mean, now I look back at old, you know, family photos and think, you know, that guy looks like he was photoshopped in. But but that's a whole other story. But no, I never, never once suspected anything.

SPEAKER_02 9:48

How did you find out you were an NPE?

SPEAKER_00 9:53

So back in 2022, uh my dad died. He was almost 90. He had been in remarkably good health virtually his entire life, up until about the last year of his life. Uh he started to slow down, he'd broken his kneecap and had a hard time recovering from it and had a cough, he couldn't shake, etc. He got sick on on a Sunday and he died on the following Friday, which actually, all things being equal, was probably for the best. I mean, he didn't have to suffer, and it was better probably for my mother, too. She's not exactly the cool master of the ship, if you know what I mean. And so it would spared her a lot of decisions to make and grief, etc. So after he died, the the feeling that I felt most was ambivalence, which was very surprising to me. My dad and I had a very warm relationship. It wasn't exactly close, but it wasn't distant either, if you if you know what I mean. It was, it was, um, I always felt loved by him and and supported and and and respected and all that. But we there was no um hero worship. You know how some some people seem to hero worship their dads. I I never, I never, I never felt that. So so I wondered if the ambivalence was just a defense mechanism. You know, if you're if you're ambivalent about something, then maybe you won't be as sad. So I thought maybe that's what was at play. Around this time, you know, late 22, early 2023, I became really interested in Portugal. I I had listened to a podcast. Uh, the rest is history as a podcast. I I like. They had an older series on the history of Portugal, which I found fascinating. And then suddenly Portugal was everywhere. It was in the news and it was on uh on TV of people traveling to Lisbon and whatever else. And so I became really interested in my Portuguese ancestry. As I said, my my mother, uh my mother's family is Portuguese. So I recalled that when I was in uh junior high, I did a family history project, you know, in the seventh or eighth grade social studies class. I still have the plastic green binder uh with the the yellowing pages inside of, you know, family tree and a little explanation in my handwriting of who was who. And so I became really interested to learn more about my Portuguese heritage. Now, I had absolutely no interest in the Polish side. And if you'd asked me then why, I wouldn't have been able to tell you the answer. I couldn't, I thought about that in my head, but I couldn't articulate it. So I decided to take an ancestry DNA test to find out about where in Portugal my ancestors were from and are there people still there, and to learn more about, you know, matches that might be out there, etc. I sent away for it in early 2024. I took it in the spring. I got the results back in the summer. It was June 24th, 2024, to be exact. I uh my family was on vacation. We were, we were down in South Texas at the beach, and it was late in the afternoon. You know, we'd we'd gone to the beach that day, so everyone was showering and, you know, changing, getting ready to go out to dinner. I got the notification, an email, and a text that my results were in. And I sat down at the table, opened my laptop, and checked out the results. And the first thing I went to was ethnicity. And according to ancestry, I was 86% Portuguese, 13% Spanish, and 1% North African. Now, that's all consistent with ancestors from the Iberian Peninsula, you know, the North Africans, the Moors, they had conquered the Iberian Peninsula or most of it back in the 8th century through the 12th century. So, you know, all consistent with life on the Iberian Peninsula. And I thought, wow, like that's that's amazing. And I saw that, you know, on the on the Portuguese side, that I had strong ties to the islands of Madeira and the Azores, which are uh Portuguese autonomous regions. The uh Madeira is off the coast of Morocco and the Azores are further west out in the Atlantic. And I thought, well, that's weird because my mother had always told me that her family was from the mainland, from continental Portugal on the Iberian Peninsula. It took me probably, I don't know, two, three, four, five minutes after looking at this and thinking this is very interesting to suddenly realize, hey, wait a minute, this can't be right. If you get 50% of your DNA from each parent, how on earth could I be 100% Portuguese? That that doesn't make any sense. So I went to the matches next. And and I I there were three, I think the way they break it down is you have close matches and then you have extended family and distant relatives, or it's something like that. So there were three close matches, people I didn't recognize, no idea who they were. And I started scrolling down the list, and I didn't recognize anybody. I I mean these surnames, they were all, you know, uh Portuguese or or uh Spanish, you know, Hispanic uh surnames, and I I didn't I didn't know who any of these people were. And I thought, what on earth is going on here? I I then remembered that I have two Facebook friends who are in Ancestry. I I had signed up for an Ancestry account years ago, maybe I don't know, 10 or 12 years ago, because I wanted to, you know, search, use their search engine or or maybe start a family tree, but I didn't do much with it. But but I've I signed up a long time ago. And I knew that I had two relatives, one on mom's side and one on dad's side, who were in ancestry. So I I searched for the the relative on mom's side, and sure enough, there he was. He was in my matches. He's a third or fourth cousin. I thought, okay, well, I felt a little better. But then I searched for the match on my dad's side, and she has kind of an unusual name. I I look I know she's on Ancestry. I looked in my matches, nowhere to be found. And I thought, this makes no sense at all. What is going on? So I did what most people do at this point. I Googled unexpected DNA result. And this page popped up with like an FAQ, and it had four options on there. Again, keep in mind, I I haven't put two and two together. I we're half an hour in, and I've I've I've not put two and two together as to what was happening. So I look at this page, and the first thing said, uh, you know, operator error. There's a hair in the test tube, or you know, they screwed up in the lab or they switched it or whatever. But you know, I found it hard to believe that half the tests would be right and half would be wrong, right? Because it appeared that my mom's side was right, but my dad's side was wrong. The the second option was had to do a sample size. I don't understand totally the specifics, but Ancestry compares your DNA to samples they have from various places around the world. And it turned out, doing a little digging, that they actually had more samples from Poland than they did from Portugal. And I thought, okay, well, that doesn't make a lot of sense. The third one was, well, maybe your parents' ethnicity is not what you think. You know, is it possible that my dad was a Portuguese orphan adopted by Polish parents? Well, the problem there is that he looked just like his siblings. And I realized something for the very first time. I had never once thought about this before. But I realized that every male on my dad's side of the family looked alike, except me. My dad and his dad, and my dad's brother, and my dad had two sisters who had male children. So my dad's nephews. They all looked the same. They were all about five foot ten, they were all thin, thin billed, they had long, thin faces, full heads of hair, and and kind of prominent noses. I don't look like that at all. I'm about 5'8, kind of stocky, bald. And so I had never once thought about that. And then I looked at number four on the list and it said, maybe your parent isn't who you think it is. And that is when it finally hit. Four, you know, half an hour, 45 minutes later, it finally dawned on me that maybe what's going on here is that my dad is not my father. And I, you know, kind of blew my mind. Like, I can't believe this. This is nuts. How can how can this possibly be? So, you know, at that point, I my my wife was there and I showed her the results. I said, Hey, I take a look at this for a second. I showed her the ethnicity. And she's like, wow. She's like, You're really Portuguese. You're really Iberian. And I said, Yeah. And she kind of looked through the matches and she said, Well, who are all these people? I said, I have no idea. And after a couple minutes, I said, Don't you see something strange here? And she said, Well, wait a minute. How can this be right if if your dad's Polish? And I'm like, exactly. And she's like, What are you trying to say? I'm like, what do you think this is telling us? And she's like, No, that can't be. And I said, Well, I don't know any other explanation. Are you familiar, Lily, with a term Occam's razor? Have you ever heard of that? Yes, remind me of that. Occam's razor is a logic principle, which says that the most likely answer to a question or solution to a problem is the one with the least number of assumptions, right? The c the classic example has something to do with, you know, if you if you hear hoof beats coming down the road and you can't see the animal, it's more likely to be a horse than a zebra, right? Because you have to assume if it's a zebra, you have to assume that a zebra escaped from the zoo or a truck overturned with zebras in the back, whereas horses are fairly ubiquitous, right? Yeah. Well, well, the the the most plausible explanation with the least number of assumptions to what was going on here is that my biological father is some Portuguese guy. And so, you know, I I said that to my wife, and she's like, I can't believe this. How how can that be? And I said, Well, I wish I knew. So my my mother-in-law was on the trip with us, and and she is a big genealogist. I mean, she's the type that'll go to courthouses and uh, you know, uh cemeteries, you know, to trace her family. She's traced her family back to the Mayflower and beyond. So she's really big into this. And so I I showed her, I said, hey, take a look at this, would you? And she kind of looked through it and she looked at the close matches, and she's like, oh, this guy right here, that's a that's really close, like 12.5%. That's a that's a close match. And, you know, she said, Well, this says that he's your half nephew. And I said, Yeah. And she said, Well, you don't have any nephews. My my my sister had, she died in the late 90s. She was in her early 20s when she died, and she was never married, never had children. So I don't have any, you know, didn't have any nieces or nephews from from my side. And she's like, Well, how can that be? And I said, Well, what do you think? She said, No, that can't be. And so, you know, we kind of went through this, went through this thing. So the next couple months I spent trying to figure out who my biological father was, if I could. I was operating under the premise that, as I said, my biological father is some Portuguese guy. So I searched through the matches, you know, uh, the family trees. I I went down rabbit holes of obituaries and Facebook. And every source you can imagine, trying to figure it out. So I had identified maybe three or four people who were possibilities. And I ruled out a couple, and I finally settled on one, the prime suspect, who we will call Tony. I figured it out because one of these matches, the half-nephew, and another match who was a second cousin, I was able to figure out where he fit in the two family trees, and they would only make sense if he was my biological father. So I did as much research as I could on this guy. What I figured out at the time was that he had uh he was born in the mid-30s, the same year as my dad. He was born, raised, lived, and died in the same place we were from, New Bedford, Massachusetts. He had uh he got married in the mid-50s and had three children in the early 60s, a boy and two girls. And I figured out that two of the three uh were still living. One of the daughters had died. And so there was a boy and a girl who were still alive. The girl, the the woman's name, uh, my well who would be my my half-sister would be Barbara. And the guy's name is wait for it, also Mark. Yes. So so he appeared, I I sent away for, you know, I sent away for like divorce records and court records, you know, I just trying to grasping at straws here to figure something out. And he he and his wife got, they they separated in 1971, which would have been the year I was conceived, and they divorced in the year I was born, 1972. Again, that's awfully coincidental. He he got married, remarried in the late 70s or early 80s after he got divorced. He died in 1998. Uh the obituary didn't say of what, but it said something to the effect that donations can go to the American Heart Association, so I assumed it was, you know, heart-related. Which, you know, my dad, he there were no heart-related problems in his family, which I'm sure we'll we'll come to. But anyway, so I at that point tried to reach out to Tony's family. You know, the two uh children who who were alive, they appeared to be on Facebook. I sent messages. I don't think they really are on Facebook very much. There were other nephews, you know, children of their children, the the three, the three siblings, Tony's three children, three other children, they had six kids among them. And I tried to figure out if some of them were on Facebook, and and I was getting nowhere in terms of of reaching out to these folks. So I figured at that point it was time to talk to my mother. So in August of 2024, this was a couple months after my discovery, I went down to talk to her. Uh, she is 80, 81 years old, failing health, you know, dementia is starting to creep in. Uh, so I wasn't sure what I was gonna get out of this. And I also, you know, to be very honest, was well, I wanted to be sensitive about it. I mean, there is a, you know, set of circumstances where maybe she doesn't know this guy. I mean, maybe, God forbid it was an assault or something. So I I, you know, I wanted to, you know, I didn't want to be accusatory in in anything I said to her. So I went down to see her and I said, look, I I need to talk to you about something. I need your help in solving a bit of a mystery. Uh whatever the answer is, I just want to know the truth. You know, I'm I'm not gonna be mad, I'm not gonna judge, nothing like that. I just I just want to know the truth because I think I deserve to know the truth at this point. And I said, how could it be that I have no Polish blood if dad was Polish? And she said, Well, I I don't I don't really understand. And I said, I took this ancestry DNA test. And according to this test, I'm 100% Portuguese. She said, Well, well, maybe you just got all that from me. I said, Well, that's not really how DNA works. You don't get random amounts from one parent or another. It's pretty much a 50-50 proposition. She said, Well, I then I don't, I don't know. That doesn't make any sense to me either. Maybe the test is wrong. I said, Well, it could be wrong, but it seems to have your half right, but dad's half is the one that doesn't match up. So I finally said to her, back in New Bedford in the early 1970s, did you know this guy named Tony? And she said, Yes. I said, Who was he? She said, He was a friend of mine. I said, How did you know him? She said that he and her mother, my grandmother, worked together. Tony was an auto mechanic who worked at a service station, auto parts store, and my my grandmother was the bookkeeper there. I said, Did you have any sort of relationship with him? She said, He and I dated before your dad and I got married. Now, I will point out that I already knew at this point that Tony got married in the mid-50s when my mom was like 11, and that was unlikely. And if they dated before she got married, he would have been married. But at any rate, and she so she said, she kind of threw up her hands and she said, What what is what is what's Tony have to do with all this? I I'm what why are you bringing him up? I said, I have reason to believe that Tony is my biological father. And she said, No. She said, that can't be. She said, no, that's that's your dad is your dad. That that can't be. I said, okay. I said, remember, I'm not, I'm not gonna be mad. I'm not gonna judge. I just I just want to know the truth. And at that point she said, well, Tony and I had an affair, but it was over a long time before you came around. I said, okay, we've we've now gone from friend to date to affair. So we're we're getting, we're moving in the right direction here, it sounds like. I I said, well, you know, when did it and she was fuzzy on numbers. She doesn't, she didn't remember, couldn't articulate exactly what that looked like. And at that point, you know, she said, You don't believe me, do you? And you don't love me, do you? And so, and so we we we kind of went through this for about half an hour, just going in circles, going all around the barn about this. And finally, you know, after half hour, 45 minutes, I said, Okay, look, I think we need to end this conversation. I said, again, you have no reason to lie to me. I just want to know the truth. We'll just have to keep it as, you know, it'll it'll still be a mystery for the time being. So I left. About a week later, I was on the phone with her talking about something else. Completely out of the blue, she said, Oh, by the way, on this Tony thing, she said, Your dad took a blood test in the hospital, which showed that you were his kid. So I don't want to hear any more about this Tony stuff. And I said, Well, hold on a second, Mom. We've now gone from friend to date to affair that was over well in advance to you might have been with him in at such time that there was some question as to who the father was. And she said, Well, I always knew it was your dad. And I said, Well, then why did you take a test? And she said, to, you know, just to be sure. I said, Well, what kind of test was it? What was this test? She didn't know. She couldn't remember. Uh, I, you know, I I'm I'm dubious about this, just to be to be honest. Uh I I don't think paternity tests were very common back in the early 70s. And if if they did take a paternity test, it it clearly was wrong because of what is shown now. And I I do wonder whether it was like a blood type test, like like, you know, to see if the blood types were compatible.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

My my dad was the universal donor. So his blood type was compatible with everybody's. I mean, his blood type would have been compatible with yours. Didn't make him your father, you know? Yeah, yeah. So so I I thought, you know, okay. And so, you know, I kind of I kind of dropped it. And I I figured at that point I wasn't gonna get very far with her. She was, she's not, she's not a very good liar. She, she, she has no poker face. She wears everything on her sleeve. So, you know, I I know that she's not clearly not being as forthcoming with me as as I would like. And I figured that was probably not gonna change. And that the fact that her cognitive abilities are declining is not helping that. So I went back to the drawing board thinking I need to, I need to talk to somebody in Tony's family. So a couple months later, finally a breakthrough in October of 2024, I I found a couple of half-nephews on Facebook who appeared to actually be active on Facebook. I sent them a note, which basically, you know, those crazy notes that you hear about all the time. We don't know each other, but I think we're related, and I need some information on this guy. Do you know anything about him? You know, that that kind of that kind of note. And uh, and so the guy wrote, one of the guys wrote right back and he said, Hey, you know, I don't, I know who you're talking about. We had no uh real connection with that side of the family, so I don't know anything about him, but this is all very interesting. Mark, you know, the other, the other Mark, Tony's son, uh, he he wrote that that Mark has a daughter on Facebook and that she's pretty active and you know, to reach out to her. So I reached out to Mark's daughter, my my half-brother Mark's daughter. And same note, we don't know each other. This is gonna sound crazy, et cetera. She wrote right back and said, hi, you know, yeah, I'd be happy to talk to my dad. I I told her that I had sent him a message on Facebook, and what I'd asked her to do was, could you please show it to him or or or pass it along or something? She said, I'm actually gonna be over at his house later today. I will show it to him then. So that afternoon, I was at my house, I was at my dining room table with my laptop, and I opened Facebook, and there was a message from Mark's daughter. And the message said, I showed my dad your note. He wants to know if your mom's name is blank, and said the name, wrote the name. Now, my mom has a fairly unusual name, and it was it. And I got lightheaded. Have you ever seen the movie Jaws? There's there's a scene in that movie where Roy Scheider is like sitting on the beach or in the tower and the shark's attacking the kid, and and he sees it, and the camera kind of rushes up on his face. So you can't really tell if like he's moving or the camera's moving. That's how I felt. I it just like just like the camera was zooming in on my face. And I was totally lightheaded at the time. It was the, I mean, it was the damnedest feeling, honestly. So I wrote back, why, yes, that is her name. And and I should also say, I hadn't, I hadn't told her or him what her name was. So she wrote back, he remembers your mom, and he also remembers your dad. Well, now it's getting really weird. So I said, This is unbelievable. She wrote back that here's his number. He wants you to call him. I said, I will call him tomorrow. I just was not prepared to just call him up and talk about this at the time. So the next day I called him up and introduced myself. And the very first thing he said to me was, So you exist after all. And I laughed and I said, What do you mean? And he said that after his parents divorced, they would they lived with mom, but they would see Tony on the weekends. So they would come home from being with Tony, and the divorce was pretty acrimonious. So the mom would say to him, you know, you think your dad's so great. Well, he had a baby boy with another woman, and they named him Mark II. What do you think of that?

SPEAKER_02 35:13

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

And and he said, I always thought that she was lying because she hated Tony and she was just trying to get back at him. But he said, apparently she was telling the truth. And I said, Well, my God, I said, I'm I'm sorry that I, you know, caused problems here and all that. And so, so we had a very nice conversation, you know, about, you know, his upbringing and and and Tony and some family history, you know, health history, and he sent me some pictures and I sent him some pictures. And and we we both, you know, kind of marveled at the fact that my parents named me Mark, even though they knew of him. The the the way he told it was that they go over to this would have been like early 1971. He would have been, you know, 10, 11 years old, something like that. They would go over to Tony's house, and my mom would be there. And she was, you know, he said she was very nice, you know, she was young with dark hair, pretty, you know, very nice to us, and you know, would hang out with us, talk to us. And she he said, you know, she she was over quite a bit. Like we saw her quite a bit. He said, and there was one time when your dad came over that he wasn't very happy and it was very tense. And there, he said, I don't think there were any punches thrown, but it was a very tense situation with a lot of yelling. And I said, This is just unbelievable. You know, I I can't, I can't even believe that this is this is going on. But so we, we, we had a really nice chat, and uh, you know, we've we've kept in touch since we talk on a regular basis and text each other and all that. At that point, a couple months within a month or two after that, I I wanted to try to get some information from from my side of the family. I had mentioned earlier that my mom has had an aunt and uncle who had four daughters. And there's one in particular that she's closest to and who's come to visit her a few times in the last few years and all. And I had actually sent this cousin a text the day I got the results back. I don't know why I did. It was, you know, one of those things where you just kind of do it. I I I kind of texted her and said, Hey, how you doing? I I took this DNA test and I got this really weird result. It says I'm 100% Portuguese. It's like, what do you make of that? And her response was something kind of like, huh, you know, that's strange, or or or something to that effect. And I I thought, you know, reading between the lines that maybe she knew more than she was letting on, you know. So, so I decided, this was around Thanksgiving of 2024. I decided to give her a call. And so I called her up and I said, Hey, you know, I need to talk to you about the past. I'm gonna tell you everything that I know, and I would like for you to tell me whether you know anything about this. So I recounted the entire story, you know, exactly what I knew, everything I've I've told you essentially. And I said, So do you know anything about this? And she said, yes. She said, I know all about Tony. We all know all about Tony. And she then told me the following story. She said that after my parents had gotten married in 1967, uh the first few years were not great. They were kind of rocky. They were having some problems, some, you know, financial problems and stuff like that. And at some point in time, my mom took up with Tony. She recalls uh being over at her house. So, you know, it's aunt and uncle and the four girls. They're all at their house. My grandmother shows up one morning and says that my mother is having an affair and she's leaving my dad. And they all go over to my parents' house to pack up my mom's stuff to move her into an apartment. And I, I mean, I'm listening to this thinking, my God, like I've never, never heard this. I've never even dreamt of this, you know, this is just can't even fathom it. And uh they went over there and they packed up her stuff. And as they were leaving, my mother wrote a note on the side of a brown paper grocery bag telling my dad that she was leaving and left it on the kitchen counter. And it's it's that piece that's just like the chef's kiss, right? I mean, that's like you can't even make that stuff up. If you saw it in a movie, you wouldn't believe it. So so she moved out, and here's where it gets a little fuzzy. At some point she found out she was pregnant. Things with Tony didn't work out, and sometime around the time I was born, her and my dad reconciled and she moved back into the house. Now, what I don't know, and what my cousin doesn't really know, and something I probably will never know, uh, though I would really love to know, is what the hell happened between the time she found out she was pregnant and the time she moved back in. I mean, what what did they know or what did they not know? My cousin seems to think that they didn't really want to know the truth. Like they didn't really want to know who the father was. And she disputes this blood test thing. She'd never heard this blood test story before. But I I wonder, you know, I you know, when when you don't, when you don't know something, you kind of create your own narrative. Like you sort of you kind of make up your own storyline or your or your facts to to maybe feel better about the situation. I can certainly see uh a set of circumstances in which Tony, who was not exactly winning Father of the Year awards, he was, as as my half-brother says, you know, he liked cars and girls. And um, you know, was a bit of a playboy, had a lot of young girlfriends in the 1970s. And my guess is that, you know, he didn't really want a fourth kid. And three was enough. And at that point, you know, my my mom was in a was kind of stuck, you know. She she could have raised me as a single parent, though I think that would have been difficult. Um but at some point it worked out with my dad. Now, you know, I don't know, I don't know what she knew. I don't know what she told him or what he thought, but I would, I would really, I would just really love to know that. I I have to say that, you know, it's a situation where it it kind of worked out for the best for me. I mean, I if if she'd end up with Tony, I think it would have been wholly, you know, unstable. I don't think it would have lasted. If she'd been a single parent, I think that would have been hard, um, even though there were some support systems with the cousins and aunt and uncles and stuff. So, you know, I ended up in the most stable situation. You know, my dad was a kind and decent guy. And I had the most stability uh as far as as far as that goes. But I I I I just wish that I I knew what transpired and and and how that how that all worked. So the the the last piece of that is finally a couple months ago, I finally got in touch with my half-sister, Barbara. I couldn't, she she was on Ancestry and on Facebook, but didn't really use them. I actually sent her a letter. I I was I Googled her address and I hope I had my fingers crossed, it was right. I sent her uh a letter and she texted me, because I'd put my number in there, and she texted me and said, Are you okay? And I said, Well, what do you mean? She said, Well, you know, a discovery like this, I can imagine where it would just knock potentially knock you through a loop. Are you okay? And yeah, it was very sweet. And I said, Well, you know, the whole thing's really weird. I mean, I haven't fully processed it and I I don't know what to make of it, but I'm I'm okay. I'm I'm not, you know, all things considered, I I'm okay. And so we we talked and we we talk on a regular basis, you know, and text and all that stuff. And and so it's it's been good, you know, getting To know both Mark and Barbara, and you know, we've exchanged pictures and and they've they've filled me in on you know on health stuff and and all that. So so that's been a really good development out of this.

SPEAKER_02 44:14

Can I ask a question about your half-siblings? Sure. So you it sounds like your your brother, also named Mark, your half-brother, the whole you so you exist after all. He had heard about you in childhood. Had Barbara, your half-sister, heard about you as well.

SPEAKER_00 44:32

She did. And the story that she tells, I'm glad you asked that, because the story she tells is actually even even more unbelievable. I I if this if this is true, if this if her memory is correct, then then it really uh puts a whole new gloss on it. But she thinks that she she would have been she would have been about 10 years old at the time that I was born. Mark Mark would have been uh 11, I think. Barbara's recollection is that her and Tony actually went over to see me as a baby. And she may have held me as a baby. Now I I said you you've got to be kidding. Like how how is that possible? The the the other the sister who died the the other sibling, Beth, she died in 2017. And and the the mother told Barbara that that I looked like Beth. And so when Tony and Barbara were coming over to see me, as Barbara tells it, Tony said, We're going over to see this baby. And Barbara said, Oh, the baby who looks like Beth. And Tony apparently, you know, flipped out. Like, don't say that. That's not true, whatever. And so Barbara's recollection is that they went over to see me as a baby, and she held me as a baby. I I mean, again, that would be stuff for the cinema, you know, stuff for stuff for the movies, if that uh this is wild.

SPEAKER_02 46:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:14

I mean, it really is. It really is.

SPEAKER_02 46:17

So many people knew about you or knew so much more than you did. Uh, you know, your mom's cousins, I guess they were, the people that helped pack her up, and how interesting. So, yes, I it sounds like your parents chose to live like in a denial. Like, we're not gonna look too much into this.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

That's what it seemed like. The the my my cousin says that they didn't think much of it because I they thought I looked like one of my mom's uncles, which doesn't make any sense because if I looked like my mom's side, what would that have to do with my dad's side? I I didn't quite understand that. But but her she really thinks that, you know, my my dad at the time, he would have been 30, 38 when I was born. So, you know, it could have been last chance to have a family. I mean, he clearly loved my mother, despite despite everything. And, you know, it could have just been he was, I mean, that's what you do, you know, you you you be the bigger person and and you do it. Now, if if he really, if they really thought that I was his, as I got older, it would seemingly occur to them that I looked a lot like Tony, not my dad. I mean, I've you know, I've seen pictures of Tony, and I, you know, he's he and I are about the same build, same facial features, bald. At some point you would think they would have seen how that I wasn't 5'10 and thin like my dad or all of the males on his family, and at least wondered, hey, what the hell's going on here?

SPEAKER_02 48:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:01

I would really love to know what what that looked like. And I've I've considered, you know, there my mom still has some some friends who, you know, were around at that time that I've considered reaching out to and saying, hey, you know, can you can you please tell me what what was going on? What happened? I've I've sort of resigned myself that I probably will never know, but I would still love to know what what that what what that looked like, what what happened there.

SPEAKER_02 48:27

Yeah. And did you find out how Tony passed and was it heart-related?

SPEAKER_00 48:33

It was. It was heart-related. He uh I don't my understanding is he didn't take very good care of himself. He smoked and he drank. He had diabetes, which, you know, runs in the family, runs in my my mom's family too. But he had a heart attack and then had bypass surgery, and I don't think he necessarily uh took care of himself after that. And so he, you know, he was fairly young when he died. And that's that was the thing about when I was talking to my mother about it. I said, well, you know, the reason it's important to know this is for the for the health stuff. And she said, Well, what do you mean? And I said, Well, I've been operating under certain assumptions for 50 years, 50 plus years, about my health that are now 50% wrong. I mean, as I as I mentioned, my dad's health was really good up until the last year of his life. I mean, there were a few blips, you know, but you know, heart disease didn't run in the family, cancer didn't run in the family, none of that stuff. Uh Tony's family, there's a history of heart disease. And so that's something to be aware of. Addiction runs in the family, uh, which is something of a concern, you know, with me and and my kids now.

SPEAKER_02 49:41

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:43

But uh, you know, I it on the heart stuff. I actually, when I was in my early 40s, I had a bout of AFib, atrial fibrillation, totally out of the blue. I I kind of shocking because I thought, well, what is going on here? Heart disease or heart problems don't run in the family. And I got treated for it and it was fine. And I've had one episode since. But I've I've actually had a cardiologist since then, and I've I've been doing, you know, uh taking heart-related medicines and stuff. So it was actually kind of a silver lining that that that happened. Because if it hadn't, then maybe I wouldn't have been doing things for heart health that I should have been doing in light of family history, you know?

SPEAKER_02 50:25

Right. Yeah, right. Absolutely. Have you had that strange doctor's appointment yet where you have to change your medical half your medical history?

SPEAKER_00 50:34

I I have. I I I went from before this bout of AFib, I basically had, you know, a doctor and a dentist and an eye doctor. Now I got like six doctors, you know, I got a cardiologist and I have a sleep doctor, and I, you know, all this stuff. It's tough getting old. Stay young, Lily. Stay young.

SPEAKER_01 50:50

No, no, I'm right there with you.

SPEAKER_00 50:53

So I at my cardiologist's office. My cardiologist is a very serious guy. Um so the the nurse, you know, came in first and was updating information and said, Are there any changes in your health history? I said, Well, actually, there are. And I said, I have recently learned that my dad is not my biological father. And he said, Oh, okay. And I said, So you can cut out, you know, these things, but you should add that, you know, heart, heart disease is now a concern and and addiction and you know, diabetes. Okay. So the doctor comes in, examines me, and you know, he's checking me out. And he says, I understand there's a change in uh health history. And I said, Yeah, I said, I've I've learned that my my dad is not my biological father. And he said, Were you adopted or donor conceived? And I said, No, it was the product of an affair. He said, Huh. He said, 70s, free love and all that. I said, yeah, free love and all that, which about the about the funniest thing I've ever heard him say, the most, the most leve most levity uh I've ever heard from him. But uh I've I've had that conversation now with uh multiple doctor's offices.

SPEAKER_02 52:10

Yep, and you don't seem like the sort of person that would cry, but we were just talking about that at a conference. Apparently, a lot of NPEs kind of break down and cry, or so I learned during that, you know, when you have to go in and and it kind of explain it, I guess it's an emotional period for people.

SPEAKER_00 52:27

I can absolutely see why it would be. I could totally I did not I mean I I didn't, but I can totally see why that would be because because you're you're you're kind of explaining it to a stranger and it kind of hits you because because the the health part is really this the most serious part of it when you when you get down to it, because you know how many how many conditions, medical conditions are hereditary. And when you've been operating for, I mean, I'm 54 years old, you know, you've been operating that long, assuming it's going one way, and now there are all these new things that you have to take into account. I mean, that's kind of scary.

SPEAKER_02 53:03

Yeah. Oh yeah. Mark, have you found anything helpful in dealing with all of this, in investigating all of this?

SPEAKER_00 53:13

Well, I think the most helpful uh things have been uh your podcast and uh Alexis' podcast. I've I've listened to virtually all the episodes, and uh it is interesting how few men seem to come on. And I don't know if I don't know what the numbers are in terms of uh men versus women NPEs. I I'm guessing that fewer men come on because they don't maybe feel as comfortable telling their stories, although I I could be I could be wrong about that, but that's my guess. But th those have been very helpful. Uh talking it through, you know, with my my wife's been very helpful. We, you know, every every time I learn something, we're usually out on a walk with our dog, and and I'll, you know, tell her, well, here's what I've learned today, or here's, you know, here's what my brother Mark has to say. And, you know, it's it's all been uh she's been very helpful in terms of in terms of that. But there there are some days, you know, it's weird. There are some days where I don't think about it at all, and other days where it's just like, oh my God, like this is nuts. I can't believe I'm in the middle of this. And and I, you know, I was I was I've I've told I've told a handful of people, you know, friends, I've I've told a handful about it that uh I'll preface it by saying, hey, you want to hear a crazy story and uh, you know, gotta tell it. But one of the things I, as I was talking through it with somebody one day, one of the things I said was, as as weird as it is, one of the one of the feelings I have is is I I have to, at least in part, be thankful for how it worked out. I mean, I wouldn't exist otherwise if not for all this. You know, if if if my parents had had kids according to plan, some other mark would be walking around or whatever. You know, I mean I wouldn't exist, my kids wouldn't exist. So it it's kind of the accidental nature of it, I'm I'm I'm thankful to some extent that it worked out that way so that I'm here. After I said it, I thought, God, that's kind of a weird thing to say. Thankful that all this weird stuff happened. But, you know, otherwise I I wouldn't be here. So in that sense, I I I'm I'm thankful. Uh I would I would love to know more of the truth. You know, my relationship with my mother is is strained because of this. It doesn't help. As I mentioned, she, you know, is having she's in cognitive decline, and that makes things harder too, just trying to navigate that on a day-to-day basis. But I I I've I've it's come up from time to time. I was I was there at her house, I don't know, three weeks ago, and I I made a comment about going to the cardiologist and taking a new heart medicine, and I said, Well, you know, I've got Tony to thank for that. And she said, Well, what do you mean? And I said, Well, because heart disease runs in his family. And then it kind of like she kind of revisited it all in her head about, oh yeah, like you know about that. And and you know, she got real quiet then, you know, didn't didn't say much after that. So it's it's been hard navigating it with her, although I just I just wish she would kind of come clean and tell me uh, you know, tell me what she knows.

SPEAKER_02 56:28

Oh yeah, absolutely. Mark, if people wanted to get in touch with you, know more about your story, ask you a question, could they do that?

SPEAKER_00 56:39

Sure, sure. They can reach out by email. Uh Mark the N P E, M-A-R-K-T-H-E-N-P-E at gmail.com.

SPEAKER_02 56:50

Oh, I love it. Easy.

SPEAKER_00 56:52

Very, very easy.

SPEAKER_02 56:54

Mark, thank you so much. Speaking about being grateful and thankful, uh, thank you for sharing your story today. I've just really appreciated listening to you.

SPEAKER_00 57:03

Well, thank you for the opportunity, Lily.

SPEAKER_02 57:06

These stories are here for us to identify with. If you are an NPE and would like to share your story, email npestories at gmail.com. You do not have to give any identifying information. If you are an NPE and would like to share your story, I'd like to hear from you. Subscribe to this podcast to hear more. Come heal with us.