I have to spit my dad in a test tube and pay $80 for it. The combination of these senseless and unfree acts has not the slightest chance of finding understanding with the Pope.
These are all our distant relatives – begging to pass the DNA test. For what… I don’t know… Our lines cross at the junction of my father’s uncle and aunt… This is important to them. This is our difference.
Well, like relatives… to finally get to their line, you have to jump like a sparrow from branch to branch of the family tree (seriously handed over to us, drawn on an oversized sheet).
My grandfather, whose last name I bear, had a brother… married to a man named Sarah, whose pedigree connects us at this point in space, time, and human destiny. For them it is a matter of life.
In the USA, digging up the roots of a family tree is the most popular hobby of all agricultural hobbies.
We do not have. In the Soviet world, where they were afraid to know the roots – almost everyone had bruises – this business was banned. Even now, the excitement of digging roots has not gripped us. For the Soviet people (and the former Soviet people do not), the historical memory exists somehow differently. And key events of the past as the basis for the formation of national identity are only an object of conflict in society.
And so I continue to nod in understanding at the request to deliver the DNA. But about how they convinced me and I almost gave up, then again I want new arguments and they find them for me – my dad doesn’t even know.
This is the famous international laboratory for spitting saliva into a test tube called 23 and mi. If someone forgot the magic number 23 from school biology class, we have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Our former geniuses who invested in the company: Sergey Brin and Yuri Milner.
Personal genomics, analysis of the human genome, determining the probability of disease risk, oncogenetics – all this became wildly interesting, especially after the human genome was deciphered at the turn of the century and everyone immediately made plans for eternal life. Absolutely eternal and absolutely disease free.
Narodishko categorically refuses to get sick and die. And he meets the inevitable with great surprise. Like the nervous lady in Tolstoy’s “Three Deaths”, she capriciously does not want an early death. Not early, not late, neither. Not like a simple man or a tree from the same story – they just cracked, grunted and fell meekly. We care about health and are already ready to cheat on genetics. And he (spoilers) won’t let him be fooled.
For an old person, all this is a damn thing, since all the diseases that can happen to him already exist. It’s ridiculous to learn about susceptibility to diseases when you’re already pretty prone to all of them, and even befriend them.
Interest in life is fading, not physically, but morally, a person is like the frescoes in Fellini’s movie “Rome”, the oxygen just touched this ancient perfection – and now they are already melting before our eyes. If you want to see what happens to a person before they die, watch Fellini’s how these faces disappear.
But I passed the test … As usual, I realized the next day after the doors slammed shut in front of my nose. The day I made my decision, 23&M stopped cooperating with Russia. And I passed the test in the largest Russian laboratory, which searches for relatives (and diseases) only by Russian base … but it is so detailed that different genetics are found even on different slopes of a village.
Well… it turns out I have high intelligence and a genetically increased risk of being overweight… well, even without testing, I observe in the mirror every day that I am overweight and smarter.
But in addition to genetic predisposition to diseases, the test is famous for searching for dead ancestors and living relatives based on genetic data. (For example, I found a close relative named Katsnelson, and we laughed at a funny surname, as in a kindergarten, and another – a columnist for socialbites.ca).
Genetic testing is a promising business. It is a pity that the startup cannot be opened. Monopoly is the nature of business. It makes sense to look for relatives only where the largest base is located.
Five years ago I was where my ancestors lived. Someone pointed at the house with his finger and threw it: but it is said that the Melameds lived here. Not some Melameds, mine. Like a rabbit in front of danger, I somehow froze inside and – I didn’t react in any way.
A lot has changed in this world in these five years and someone important has left him and I stumbled upon photos of my ancestors by chance. And yes, it shocked me… I don’t know why contact with the past turned into such an outburst, even if it was poorly worded.
This woman, my great-grandmother, who came to Moscow to escape starvation cannot imagine my tragic escape from this root – it is impossible, no matter how hard you try to imagine. Here she is sitting next to the house on Bolshoi Ovchinnikovsky Lane, a Muscovite living in a house with windows overlooking the Kremlin, a worn, long-haired woman in almost beggar clothes, this 1935, looks about 80 years old 45 years old. She didn’t survive the war, she. The house will be demolished, they will give a small compensation, it is forbidden to buy an apartment. Oh, those sweet Soviet times, he cares so much about his compatriots. I managed to get half a house in the suburbs from distant relatives, old ears. And so it happened – since then native Muscovites never live in the city center. He would stay in Moscow during the war and protect that slum apartment. This is a separate story.
Most evacuees will lose their apartment or room, and few will be able to defend their housing. But already the daughter, my grandmother, in the same year, in the same house, I thought that the fate of my grandmother was terrible, unjust, and I remembered that she was already very sick, but I did not pay attention to this photo. Grandma married well. In the photo, a confident woman with a look that only beautiful women have. You can’t make this up. Well dressed and stylish. She is holding in her arms a nephew who is capriciously grimacing in neat children’s clothes. During the war, she sewed patchwork quilts at night so that the children would at least have something to eat. She will lose her husband when she turns 36. She will be alone with her two children. Since then, her photos have already captured a completely different person.
I look at countless pre-war photos of Moscow in 1935, I have relatives in them somewhere. Lots of foreigners. This is Zamoskvorechye, the very center of the city. These are not barracks, no, these are old 19th century houses. And people mostly look like characters from the movie “My Friend Ivan Lapshin” by Herman. And not in the main characters, no, they come from the environment in which the famous killer Solovyov existed. They say that when Herman handed over the film, he was convicted of slandering and slandering the country’s recent past. Later, he did not say that he did nothing special and filmed modern Astrakhan in the role of Leningrad of the 30s.
Why did roots become so important… Is it something to do with me or with the world?
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.