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Under5feet
January 20, 2018

What's in a name?

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This was inspired by AGC with our weekly assignment being "about me" and made me want to finally share this part of my life that has given me so much to think about with new revelations still coming, firstly when starting to talk about my father, wait he's not my father!
Not sure where to begin, but in 1948 this is a picture of my family house in Pacific Grove, CA when I was brought home from the Monterey,CA hospital. I am the youngest of six but we moved when I was four years old to a dairy farm in small Agnew, CA the town's claim to fame was having a mental hospital and Momma used to tease us and say who was gonna go there if they didn't behave?
So almost two years ago a friend saw pictures of my husband's family and suggested he do a dna test, it is a
hobby of hers and she has been helping people with their family histories for 15 years. I knew my oldest sister who is 15 years older and my brother who is 4 years older had already registered with Ancestry.com. So I helped with finding info and pictures for my hubby's charts and on a lark decided to do my own test. I didn't even mention it until I got the results and shared them with the family. Of course our friend Renee was given the results, too. She came over to work on my family tree and stunned me when she informed me that James is not your full brother! I was so caught off guard even though I had seen my report from Ancestry.com I was not really paying attention, because I saw there was evidence that I was Portuguese as I thought I was.
She started by getting more info from me and I called my oldest sister to tell her what I had found out and she floored me when she said the words "we never knew" and mentioned that my sister who is 13 years older and her knew that my parents had been intimate but they had wondered about my uncle's brother who's woodworking shop was two lots away that was owned by my uncle, his brother and his father. So I said I was thinking it was a relationship of conveniencs and that it was probably my uncles brother and Renee told me he had a son and I got excited that I might have a brother from this mess. I made the regretful decision to call my aunt and asked her about the possibility and she was mortified and said I was not to try to contact the family in any way. Then Renee tells me he is definitely not the father.
My siblings all tell me I am their sister no matter what, my daughter-in-law sends me a wonderful heartfelt email that I so appreciated. I felt that who I had hurt the most was my beloved Aunt who's house I was in and out of every summer and played with my cousins with my grandparents living on the next block. My Ava had costumes made for me every year for the 4th of July parade, with my favorite being the Statue of Liberty! Uncle John had a miniature cannon he lit for the occasion. But what made me the saddest was that I was not an Avila and I cried and cried, Avila the maiden name which is my middle name I was so proud of because it was part of my Portuguese history and both of my boys have Avila as their middle names.


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