Angela Mollard: How exposing a family secret became an extraordinary tale of tolerance

Secrets have the power to undo families but, in an era when DNA tests are exploding the very fabric of identity, Angela Mollard witnessed an extraordinary tale of tolerance and kindness.

My mum Judy has brown eyes. Her parents both had blue. For more than 60 years that little detail has bothered her.

When she was training to become a teacher, a lecturer in human development told the class it was virtually impossible for two blue-eyed parents to have a brown-eyed baby.

She went home and asked her mum: “Am I adopted?” My Nana was indignant, though agitated. “No”, she said firmly. She had given birth to her, in hospital, as her birth certificate showed. Mum got on with life. She married, had three kids and became a gifted special needs teacher.

Then last year my cousin asked if she’d do a DNA test. Treena has spent the last 15 years building a family tree, so mum happily obliged.

As she handed back the test, a small sample of spit, that lifelong niggle surfaced. “You’ll probably discover I’m adopted,” she joked.

What happened next is astonishing, not just because it could’ve unravelled my mum, but because it’s a story that’s unfolding across the globe as science gives us the means to unstitch and lay bare the stories we’ve long been told.

Angela Mollard with her mum, Judy. Pictures: Supplied

My cousin drove six hours to give mum the news in person, breaking down as she revealed what she’d found. Mum was not adopted, she told her, but her dad was not her father. Her DNA test had come back NPE – Not Parent Expected – and after months of painstaking work, Treena had discovered that mum’s biological father, my grandfather, was an American soldier, stationed Down Under during World War II. She even had a photo.

Bernie was short, just 5ft 5in, which explains why Mum barely nudges 5ft. Her dad Bob had been a lanky six-footer and my Uncle John, now her half rather than full brother, was taller still. The brown eyes? They came from Bernie. As did mum’s new-found ethnicity. She was half Jewish.

Angela Mollard's mum, Judy, when she was 18 and at teacher's college.

Bernie during the war – and looking so similar to mum at teacher’s college.

Secrets have the power to undo families, to tear them apart for generations to come. But in an era when DNA tests are exploding the very fabric of identity – who we are and where we come from – I have witnessed something extraordinary. My mum’s discovery is a tale of tolerance and kindness at every turn. It’s one I’m sharing because it’s at odds with what’s unfolding in this country and around the world.

My mum, who turns 80 this week, has approached these revelations with curiosity and compassion. I was worried she might’ve been the product of a one-night stand but Bernie and my Nana, Kathleen, had a relationship. He’d set off for war as a newly married 20-year-old, ending up in New Zealand after contracting malaria while in the New Hebrides.

We don’t know how they met but, intriguingly, a photo in my Nana’s album shows her sitting between my Poppa and Bernie.

Piecing together their story took months. After several dead ends Treena finally found my mum’s half-brother and half-sister in Massachusetts. Their dad had told them they had a half-sister in New Zealand. He’d had genuine feelings for my Nana. But when he’d left for the war his new bride was pregnant. They had a son. Understandably, his wife made him choose: them or us.

Mum's sister, Bob, Kathleen and Bernie.

Kathleen, Judy as a toddler, and Bob.

It’s one thing to know your dad had another child, it’s another to be confronted with a real-life woman on the other side of the world. But my new-found uncle and aunt have been unfailingly kind.

“Welcome to the family,” my mum’s half-brother emailed Treena when she raised the possibility he might have a sister.

Mum’s half-sister, a retired midwife, penned the most beautiful letter for Mum when she learned the news.

Her only concern? How we might feel about them being Jewish.

Mum has lots of feelings. There’s been nights spent awake wondering why Nana kept this secret all her life. Why hadn’t she revealed the truth when Poppa died?

We’re sure he didn’t know, because every picture of mum and her dad shows him gazing adoringly at her. Was the “pen friend” Nana wrote to in America on those blue aerograms actually Bernie? Was stress the reason she took Valium?

As a journalist, I’m practised at uncovering secrets but it’s unsettling, with just a mouthful of spit, to unearth the truth my Nana spent a lifetime hiding.

Mum and I talked about how Nana had to abandon her fashion career to look after her sick grandmother, how this led her fiance to end their engagement.

She married Poppa a few years later as a way out.

Fortunately, my mum has known great love. With my stepdad, with her children, with the only dad she ever knew.

This year we’ll visit our new family in America. Perhaps celebrate Shabbat.

As she celebrates her 80th, I will toast her grace and acceptance in a world where those qualities seem forgotten.

As she told me: “I wouldn’t want it any other way because then I wouldn’t be me.”

ANGELA LOVES

Lip Service

Good riddance to those glossy lip oils which leave your hair stuck to your smackers. Welcome matte moisture-infused lip stains such Mecca Max Lip Lock Balmy Stain (my fave) for women with lives beyond posing.

Bear Truth

Have you re-read Winnie-the-Pooh as an adult? It’s gorgeous. All that wisdom in one bear “of very little brain” who turns 100 next year. Like this one: “You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.”

Originally published as Angela Mollard: How exposing a family secret became an extraordinary tale of tolerance