Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love

“What never fail to draw me in, however, are secrets. Secrets within families. Secrets we keep out of shame, or self-protectiveness, or denial. Secrets and their corrosive power. Secrets we keep from one another in the name of love.”

As a writer, Shapiro is drawn to secrets. Inheritance is of a piece with the rest of her work in that secrets is one of its central themes. Shapiro’s parents chose to keep the truth about her paternity a secret. Similarly, secrecy and anonymity are critical aspects of the fertility industry. Uncovering these secrets has a traumatic impact on Shapiro, which she describes in the memoir.

“It turns out that it is possible to live an entire life—even an examined life, to the degree that I had relentlessly examined mine—and still not know the truth of oneself.”

Shapiro’s blindness to the truth exemplifies confirmation bias. She fielded comments about not looking Jewish her entire life, she was the posterchild for a Kodak Christmas campaign, and her mother told she was conceived by artificial insemination, yet she never questioned her identity, despite leading a highly examined life.

“What am I now that I was then? / May memory restore again and again / The smallest color of the smallest day; / Time is the school in which we learn, / Time is the fire in which we burn.”

These lines from a Delmore Schwartz poem resonate for Shapiro as she thinks about her father. She wonders if her father will ever feel like her father again, or if she will spend the rest of her life disconnected from her past.

“I tell my students, who are concerned with the question of betrayal, that when it comes to memoir, there is no such thing as absolute truth—only the truth that is singularly their own. I say this not to release them from responsibility but to illuminate the subjectivity of our inner lives. One person’s experience is not another’s.”

As a memoirist, Shapiro writes about her life and the lives of those around her. However, she recognizes that her memories and experiences of the past may not match those of others. In other words, truth is relative. Shapiro stresses this in her teaching to ease her students’ fears of betraying their friends and families.

“We were speaking of normal things. Where to have dinner? I needed to call my editor to talk through the jacket design. But the thick sludge was everywhere. I now understand it as shock: the sense of my own body as foreign, delicate, fractured, and the world at once hostile and implacable in its anonymity.”

Shapiro is in shock when she arrives in San Francisco. She makes dinner plans with Michael, thinks about the jacket design of her new book, and engages in small talk with her Uber driver. Shapiro describes functioning as if on a split screen. One side appears normal, while the other side is shattered.

“The people who are with us by either happenstance or design during life-altering events become woven into the fabric of those events.”

Shapiro reaches out to Jennifer, a Baltimore-based journalist with experience writing about genealogy, shortly after getting her DNA test results. She and Jennifer have never spoken before, yet their relationship is instantly intimate because it is based on Shapiro’s deeply personal discovery. Jennifer helps Shapiro identify Ben as her biological father. She is present during this tumultuous period in Shapiro’s life, forever linking her to this period in Shapiro’s mind.

“Who knew how long it would take him to write back—that is, if he was ever going to write back? Maybe he was out of the country. Or had fallen ill. Or maybe we were wrong, completely wrong about him, about everything.”

Shapiro’s anxiety mounts as she awaits Ben’s response to her first email. She not only makes excuses for the delay but also maintains hope that the DNA test is a mistake. The process of coming to terms with the truth is a long one for Shapiro. She thinks about the past, reads scholarly books and articles, has deep conversations with family and friends, and seeks the guidance of experts, including rabbis and fertility doctors. In this passage, however, she is still clinging to denial.

“I wanted him to see that this woman claiming to be his biological child was not crazy.”

This quote is about identity. Shapiro includes a link to her website in her first message to Ben to prove to him that she is worthy of his time and consideration. She is not an unbalanced woman making wild claims, but an accomplished writer who teaches at an Ivy League university. Shapiro’s website also includes pictures of her. Having seen photos of Ben, Shapiro knows he will recognize his face in hers.

“Her unsteady gaze, her wide, practiced smile. Her self-consciousness, the way every word seemed rehearsed. His stooped shoulders, the downward turn of his mouth. The way he was never quite present. Her rage. His sorrow. Her brittleness. His fragility. Their screaming fights.”

Shapiro’s discovery results in a more complete understanding of her parents. She comes to see their behavior as the product of having kept secret the truth about her conception. Her mother’s aloofness and anger, her father’s sadness, and their volatile relationship take on new meaning in light of the truth.

“I had always known that I had formed myself in opposition to my mother. But I hadn’t realized to what degree I had designed our family life counter to the one I remembered. As a child, I had most often eaten dinner alone. Meals with my parents were always in the dining room. The house of my childhood was formal and cold.”

Shapiro’s unhappy childhood and fraught relationship with her mother made her want something different for her child. She and Michael created a relaxed, open, and fun-filled home for Jacob. Her mother, then, served as an example of what not to do.

“‘It’s rare that you get an opportunity in life to stand outside yourself. It’s as if Hakadosh baruch hu is saying, Child, come sit next to me and now, look. Finding all this out is a door to discovering what a father really is. It isn’t closure—you may not get to have that—but it’s an opening to a whole new vista.’”

Aunt Shirley views Shapiro’s situation in positive terms. She advises Shapiro to approach her newfound knowledge as an opportunity. Rather than focusing on loss, Shapiro’s circumstances can serve as a point of departure for reconsidering what constitutes fatherhood. Shapiro may never get closure, but Shirley assures her that Paul is her father in all the ways that count.

“Her voice—hoarse from speaking for hours—was a part of me. Her strong hands, her expressive forehead, her sweet smile—all a part of me, because she had always been a part of me. I had been so afraid that blood would be all that mattered.”

Shirley puts Shapiro’s mind at ease the moment she learns the truth about her paternity. For Shirley, what matters isn’t DNA, but Shapiro’s bond with Paul and his relatives. By contrast, Ben is an outside element who does not figure in the equation.

“It is the nature of trauma that, when left untreated, it deepens over time.”

Shapiro researches trauma in the wake of her DNA test. She comes to believe that her trauma is rooted in the trauma her parents experienced trying to conceive, and in their decision to keep her from knowing the truth about her origins. Shapiro believes she could have been spared that trauma if her parents had simply told her the truth from the outset. Withholding the truth amplified the trauma, rather than keeping it hidden or making it disappear.

“I wanted to reach back and let that young, lost girl know it was okay. I wanted to tell her that grief—particularly the phenomenon known as complicated grief—runs its own course in its own time. But it was hard for me to allow myself that same compassion now.”

Shapiro is reminded of the depth of her grief following her father’s passing after finding an old journal. She knows her current sorrow will pass, having lived through unspeakable pain before. In the midst of this sorrow, however, she finds it difficult to see a way out.

“Disparate worlds had been floating and colliding within me all my life. To contend with these invisible floating worlds, I had created a narrative edifice, I now understood. Story after story kept me from ever inching too close to the truth.”

This quote addresses otherness. Learning the truth about her origins explains why Shapiro felt like an outsider growing up. She comes to understand that she looked and felt different because she was, in fact, different. She inherited traits not just from her parents, but also from Ben.

“People had told me every single day of my life that I didn’t look like I belonged in my family—nor did I feel I belonged in my family—yet I didn’t stop to consider what this might mean. I couldn’t afford to. Not even after I learned the method of my conception at the age of twenty-five. Not even after Susie told me I ought to look into it.”

This passage is about confirmation bias. Shapiro never questioned her identity, despite all the evidence suggesting she was not her father’s daughter. Her mind interpreted the clues in a way that allowed her to hold on to her beliefs. The alternative was unfathomable.

“Later, it will occur to me that Ben Walden felt, to me, like my native country. I had never lived in this country. I had never spoken its language or become steeped in its customs. I had no passport or record of citizenship. Still, I had been shaped by my country of origin all my life, suffused with an inchoate longing to know my own land.”

In this passage, Shapiro uses an analogy to describe what it was like to meet Ben. Ben was both foreign and familiar to Shapiro, like a country she was born in but never visited. He was a stranger, yet there was something profoundly familiar about him, notably, his physical features and gestures.

“It is a measure of true adulthood that we are able to imagine our parents as the people they may have been before us.”

Shapiro revisits her experience with infertility after discovering the truth about her origins. She and Michael underwent fertility treatments a few years after Jacob’s birth. Shapiro’s struggles with infertility help her empathize with her parents. She imagines her mother before she became a raging narcissist, and her father before he was consumed by sorrow. In her mind, she sees a young, vibrant couple praying for a family and willing to do whatever it takes to get one.

“Susie had fallen away from me again with astonishing ease, in fact with something like relief. Our lifetime of disconnection, finally explained.”

Shapiro and Susie grew up believing they were half-sisters, but they never had a close relationship, save a few years when Shapiro was a teenager. Susie checks in periodically after Shapiro learned about her parentage, but the distance between them soon returns. The news that they are unrelated biologically came as a relief to Shapiro. It not only explained the coldness between them, but also allowed her to let go of what was, at best, a distant relationship.

“I tried to ride each new wave like a surfer: fluid, balanced, focused, come what may.”

Shapiro was certain about her identity, only to learn that everything she thought she knew about herself and her family was wrong. She came to accept and eventually embrace uncertainty. In this passage, she compares her new attitude to a surfer riding a wave. She is half Ashkenazi Jewish and half Anglo-Saxon Presbyterian. Her ancestry is diverse. This knowledge prompts her to experiment with Christmas traditions, combining them with Jewish ones.

“She named me Daneile. Not Danielle.”

This quote is about identity. Shapiro was never comfortable with her birth name. Like her blond hair and blue eyes, her name made her stand out and prompted people to question her Jewish identity. Shapiro wonders why her mother gave her an unusual name, when the circumstances of her birth were already unorthodox. She legally changed her name in response to her discoveries, effectively naming herself.

“I was beginning to see the danger in adhering to a single narrative, hewing to a story. The peril wasn’t only in getting it wrong. It was a kind of calcification, a narrowing, a perversion of reality that hardened and stilled the spirit.”

Shapiro believed the story her parents told her, turning a blind eye to the truth. Learning about her origins made her a more flexible person. It was Shirley who first encouraged Shapiro to embrace her new identity, presenting her discovery in positive terms, rather than as a loss. Shapiro is still her father’s daughter, but she is also inextricably linked to Ben.

“What if I’d always known that the reason I looked different and felt different was in fact because I was different? It would be easy to fantasize that this would have been better. But we can never know what lies at the end of the path not taken. Other difficulties, other heartaches, other complexities would certainly have emerged. But at least we would have been a family traversing them together.”

Shapiro contemplates what her life might have been like if her parents had been honest with her from the start. Although it is easy to idealize what might have been, Shapiro is certain of one thing: The truth would have made her feel less alone and less like an outcast. Further, the truth might have prevented her family from rupturing, making her mother less angry and her father less broken.