A year or so before my Dad died in 2019, he gave me several copies of a document I would describe as a family tree scroll of my paternal side of my family. Going back three generations, it lays out on about a four-foot stretch of letter-sized paper taped together, the family relations of my grandfather and his father before that. My great-grandfather was born in Sweden in the early 1800s. Dad gave me the scrolls, I think, to start a dialogue and suggest we take a trip back to Sweden soon to visit the family homestead. Unfortunately, we didn't know that he would get diagnosed with cancer shortly after and then die. I mourn the trip that never happened.

I didn't look at the scrolls again until I took an Ancestry DNA kit. My step-mom had taken one a few years ago and said how cool it was to see what her genetics told her about her ancestral heritage. A few of my cousins and my sister have taken one as well. If you aren't familiar with how Ancestry DNA works, you submit a saliva sample for a fee of $99 (or less if you can catch a sale). They analyze it and list the results in a database that can match you up with other people who share your DNA who have also submitted samples.