Science Doesn’t Care About Your Feelings

Who was my grandfather?

It was a family mystery I attempted to solve several years ago when I visited ninety-five year old Uncle Clay.  Clay was the only one left alive who could tell me if it was true, that my dad’s adopted father, Charlie Holland, was in fact my true, genetic grandfather.

“Hey girl?” Uncle Clay whipped his head this way and that, trying to use the pigeon-holed vision he had in his one remaining eye to see me.  I sat about two feet in front of him.

“I’m here,” I reached out and touched the loose skin on his bony hand.  “So Grandpa Holland had an affair while he was married to grandma, and then adopted the child from that affair, right?  Nobody knew dad was Grandpa Holland’s real son, but he is isn’t he?”

“Charlie …” Uncle Clay began then stared blankly into space for a moment, “okay…sure, sure.  It’s what you say.”

He might have been mostly deaf and certainly blind, but Clay’s acknowledgement of the truth of this story was good enough for me.  I wanted the riddle solved.  I wanted to believe Charlie Holland, the grandfather I’d known all of my life, was also my real grandfather in every sense of the word.

Ancestry-dot-com had not even entered the scene when I visited Uncle Clay back in 1998.  It would be some time before I, like 26 million other people (according to CNBC), used consumer DNA tests to find information on my heritage.  With a 99.9 accuracy rate, DNA testing is not wishful thinking, it is science and as such, these tests are not swayed by the emotional needs of their customers.   So it was with great disappointment that I eventually discovered I have Scotland and Ireland in me, but no Holland—either the country or the surname.  Uncle Clay had fudged the truth.  Of course, I set him up and lead him to this lie.

I pushed my frail, great-uncle (by adoption) until he told me what I wanted to hear.

After I found out about my ancestry through DNA analysis, I called an old friend of mine who I don’t see very often, just to talk and catch up.  He confessed how disappointed he was with DNA testing too.

“I know I’m a quarter Cree Indian—I don’t care what their test says,” my friend was adamant.

He and I both grew up in the 60’s when claiming Native American ancestry was counter-culture and cool.  Paul Revere and the Raiders sang songs with lyrics like, “Cherokee nation, Cherokee tribe, so proud to live, so proud to die…”  A movie came out in 1971, Billy Jack, starring a handsome lead actor who played a part-Indian, Viet Nam vet with some serious butt-kicking skills.  Obviously, my friend had been taken in by these romanticized images of being a half-breed.

“But your DNA tests show your ancestors were from Europe.  Surely you’re not going to argue with the science?”

But he could argue, and he did. “I’m not too big on science anymore,” he said as easily as disclosing he didn’t like broccoli.

I was dismayed and surprised by this comment.  If he didn’t trust or believe in science anymore, why didn’t he get rid of his cell phone, computer, and car?  Conveniences like these were given to him by science.  My friend had become very religious though.  He told me he preferred to trust his feelings rather than some DNA laboratory.

This summer I thought about that long-ago phone conversation when I read a New York Times op-ed entitled:  “The Religious Right’s Hostility to Science is Crippling our Coronavirus Response.” Some lies are harmless and maybe even make us feel better:  Grandpa Holland is, and always will be, my grandfather.  Other stories we tell ourselves though, can be absolutely deadly.

 

Image Credit:  Grandpa Charlie Holland        Image Credit:  Ancestry Dot Com       Image Credit:  Billy Jack

Corona Summer 2020

There’s an old jazz standard entitled “Summertime” and it’s most well-known and oft repeated line is: “Summertime…and the livin’ is easy…”  I love this song, but in the age of coronavirus, the livin’ isn’t easy, it’s complicated.  Many of us during this season of picnics, pools, and patio parties are struggling with what we can, and can’t do now that the pandemic seems to be spiraling out of control again.  I found ample evidence of this conflicted state of mind when my husband and I took a trip to get some needed medical testing done in another state.

Summer trips are usually a time to explore, have fun, and play, but the only game we played on this trip was dodging the spiky corona ball.

We drove through the corner of three different states and each had its own rate of infection, and consequent policies and restrictions.  It made me crazy, and I longed for some consistency.  Recently, Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious disease expert, spoke about the consistency issue.  He told a skeptical senate committee the best way to fight the pandemic was with a coordinated and collaborative national effort—not disparate states creating their own policies.

I wish I could have stuffed some of those senators in the car with us on our road trip. Then they could see how scatter-shot our response to Covid-19 has been.  At our Utah motel we had a “touchless” check-in and were asked to schedule pool time.  But in Wyoming the pool was completely unrestricted and overrun with families having a party.  The geology museum was closed in Wyoming though, and another plus, the convenience store clerk wore a mask.  In Montana most of the motel staff went without masks, and the bars downtown were swarming with people.  This, despite social distancing signs posted everywhere.

Actually, what really caused my head to spin on our trip was how few people wore masks.  There was no need for a screaming Karen to have a melt-down over her “right” to go without a mask—because no businesses required them.

In general, I’d estimate less than 30% of the people we saw on our trip wore masks. 

I became a little paranoid around all these bare faces, worried someone might spew a virus bubble my way.  I started running and shunning people—in the grocery stores, on the sidewalks, down a bicycle path.  I was rude and weird-acting—more than usual anyways.

Ironically, probably the closest I came to actually getting an infection was at the hospital where my husband was being tested.  I walked right into a big, masked nurse coming out of the ladies restroom. I was as startled as she was, and we both let out a breathy yelp.  She blew so much air at me I could smell her morning coffee through my mask.  I hoped she was neither saint nor sinner, a church choir member or a bar-hopper, two kinds of known virus-spreaders.

By the end of our trip, when we finally crossed the Idaho state line, I felt relieved.  Home is safe, right?  Then I checked the local news on my IPhone.  When we left Idaho, the infection rate was running over a hundred a day.  The news on my cell said for the past several days, corona infections had climbed into the 200’s.  As I write this, Idaho’s infection rate was over 400 yesterday.

But it’s summer, and after we unpacked from our trip I drug our big cattle tank into the back yard and filled it with water.

For a few moments, floating in the tank, I was able to relax.  I thought then, the livin’ this summer hasn’t been easy, but maybe the fall will be better.  Who knows?  That’s the thing about the coronavirus, we just don’t know.

 

 

Image Credit:  Road Trip    Image Credit:  Not Feeling Well by Diana Hooley     Image Credit:  Cattle Tank Dip by Diana Hooley