Looking back at my last blog post from more than a year ago, I am somewhat bemused by the dramatic "my whole identity has been upended" tone of it all.

Yes, I will admit that when my My Heritage results came back as zero-percent Italian ancestry, I was quite taken aback. 

Growing up, I was immersed in everything Italian - food, sayings, superstitions, and people. I was raised by my second-generation Italian grandparents who in many ways were more like Italian immigrants. My grandmother spoke Italian - mainly to her friends when she didn't want us to know what was going on - and she baked and cooked all the foods that her own mother and grandmother had made back in Southern Italy. My grandfather, like his Neapolitan ancestors before him, loved working outdoors with his hands, growing his own tomatoes on a borrowed sliver of soil. And while my grandfather was not bilingual, his off-color, slang Italian still weaves itself within my own vocabulary to this day.

Growing up, I also identified as Italian because in doing so it was an implicit and maybe not-so-implicit rejection of everything from my paternal side. Irish? Yeah, I guess I'm technically half Irish, I would say, but I am really Italian.

When my DNA results came back, not only did Italian not come up under my Ethnicities, very few of my DNA Matches had Italian surnames. Instead the surnames most matched with me were Miller, David, and Smith - an additional blow to my childhood "really Italian" claim.

Another surprise was that I am (at least according to My Heritage) 14.3% Jewish. My reaction to this was more "eh, that feels right" especially because it allows me to fantasize that I am a direct descendant of my all-time favorite  painter Amedeo Modigliani. 

After I received my DNA results, I got in touch with a few of my maternal cousins. In speaking with them and doing subsequent research, it makes sense that my heritage would come up as Greek and Iberian instead of outright Italian. Naples, where my great-grandparents were from, was settled by the Greeks in the 8th Century BCE and for two centuries starting in 16th century was ruled by Spain. In addition, it's possible that at least some of my family - perhaps 14.3% of them - came to Italy with paintbrushes in hand as part of the Spanish Inquisition.

Who I am has changed. That's undeniable. But who I am has changed not because of some early morning swab of my cheek sent off to a DNA lab.

Instead, who I am has changed because of a slow unfolding and release of what has defined me. I am Italian. I am not Italian. I am not Irish. I am Irish. I am Catholic. I am Jewish. I am a mother and a wife. Without sons at home, I am no longer the same mother. Nor am I the same wife. And, maybe most importantly, like my newly-imagined paisan Modigliani, I am a creative. I am a sculptor. I am a painter. Maybe not as good as my forefather, that's for sure, but I am both of these things nonetheless.

Mitzi is still in the house. But with her now are so many other people - some from far-away lands long ago and some closer to home waiting to be discovered.

When I was little my grandparents didn't call me by my given name,

For the first few years, they called me Dee, presumably because that's the only way my brother - a scant 20 months older than me - was able to say my name when I was born. But even after my brother graduated to polysyllabic words, my grandparents still wouldn't call me Judy. Instead, I was Mitzi.

Now, the on-the-surface, thoroughly ironic explanation for this was that my grandmother loved the actress/singer/dancer Mitzi Gaynor so much she was hoping by some weird namesake osmosis that I'd inherit some of Mitzi's long-legged beauty and talent. (The truth for my name rejection, as it turns out, was sadder. My maternal uncle was left at the altar by a woman named Judy, and the name was a hurtful reminder, especially for my grandmother.)

Even as a little kid who didn't find out the truth until much later, I knew there were holes in the nickname explanation.  My grandmother was absolutely gaga for Rock Hudson and yet the only thing she ever called my brother was Joey. But more than that, what I was told just didn't ring true instinctively, and  because of this one day I put down my very ungraceful, very chubby foot and and insisted in a very non-melodic voice that everyone, including my grandparents, call me by my real name. To my surprise, they agreed.

In a flash my identity changed. And even though I was the one who initiated the change it was unsettling. Who I was and how I viewed myself my whole life became instantly just so different.

Flash forward more than four decades to today and I am experiencing an identity crisis all over again, thanks to something I once again initiated; I insisted my husband and I do a MyHeritage DNA Kit just for fun. Now with the results in, I am unsettled. I am unsettled because everything about who I am and how I have viewed myself my whole life is just so different.

Until next blog post....

For the four people who read my site, make note:

I am switching the domain to this blog to akamitzi.com.

Bookmark it!

And then come back in a few days and read why.

​Peace and love.

 


a Robin Hood,
hiding in mirrors
silently stealing
reflections of youth
leaving behind 
false representations
old, Merry Men laugh
my visage, invisible


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