It was Mar 8, 2021, and I opened my email from 23andMe to find out where my ancestry had started once and for all. I had been a weekend warrior years ago regarding family trees on ancestry.com trying to trace back to my roots. In 2006 or so, I pulled together a Watson family tree that was impressive dating back to the 1500s or so and tracing my family of origin back multiple generations. It was about as much as I could learn at the time and I had satisfied my itch to learn more about my family so I stopped my research then in January of 2021 my kids decided to purchase a DNA kit for my 54th birthday. The 23 and me kit sat on my dresser for a few weeks. I was unsure just how involved it would be to give them a sample and get it back into the mail for their processing so it sat for a few weeks. Finally, I spit in the small container, followed the instructions simply enough, and waited for the results. I was curious but never would I have guessed what I was about to uncover in a million lifetimes. At first, it was merely interesting as I studied the results. Hmm, it says I am 41.2% Finnish, 34.0% British and Irish, 12.7% French and German, 6.5% Scandinavian (Sweden), 4.6% Broadly Northwestern European, and then a few small trace amounts of less than 1% from a few sources. I am mostly from Finland. Where is Finland again? Aren’t Finland and Sweden next to each other? As I studied the 23 and me “closest of keen” I noticed I had several cousins popping up who lived in Finland. This was curious to me because in my prior research back in 2006 I did not see one single person from this part of the world in all my research. This prompted me to send 23 and me a post and ask if could there be a mistake in their findings.

Their response and others online with 23 and me was that Finnish DNA is very distinct and it would be highly unusual for there to be a mistake.

The responses online were it was much more likely that someone in my family has a secret.

It was brought to my attention by one post that for me to have that much Finnish DNA I would have to have one parent that was 100% from Finland.

The results I am looking at do not fit with everything I have ever known. WOW, what if one of my parents were adopted from Finland? Their adoption seemed to make the most sense, so I grabbed my phone to call my mom, the only living parent.

My Father Tom Watson died on March 14, 2007, with me beside his hospital bed in Carrolton Ga at Tanner Hospital. He was 68 years old at the time of his death. My father had been an anchor for me in my younger years. I was now 40 years old with young kids myself as each day I sat in that amazingly uncomfortable hospital chair in his ICU room. I slept and lived by his side for those 10 days or so. He had been there for me when I needed him for 40 years. Now he needed me and it felt like there was nothing I or the Doctors could do. His lungs were failing him and causing stress and strain on all his other vital organs. He had been a heavy smoker through the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. At least 25 years of chain smoking had caused his lungs to become sick and die. He had stopped in the ’90s but it seemed unfortunately it was too late by that time.

This wonderful, supportive, loving father had just died, and the reality of how final death is was beginning to overcome me. He was gone.

No more late-night phone calls on my way home during drive time from the University of Georgia where I often drove home to Duluth from around 10-11 pm after a Campus Outreach event. The organization I worked for and founded in the Atlanta area.

My parents had divorced when I was 5 or so years old only to remarry and divorce in that same year. My dad said he remarried to be back close to the kids, and my mother rightly told him that would not keep the marriage alive and their second marriage only lasted weeks. I lived with my mother and older brother Jimmy and younger sister Renae from 5-10 years of age and we had some hard things happen to us during these years. My mother had only a 9th-grade education from the hills of Chattanooga Tennessee. She married at 14 and had my older brother Jimmy by 15 years of age. When I was 10 years old, I went to live with my dad due to his stability and loving support until I left for college. I was the first in my family to graduate from college.

So, I called my mother and asked her if she or my dad had ever been adopted and she assured me that they had not. I shared with her the results of the DNA test and asked if she could think of a reason why I would be 50% Finnish. My mother tried to assure me that I knew who my parents were and she asked why I was so interested in the DNA stuff. I told her that I had always been naturally curious about my ancestry and where I was from. At this point in the conversation, my mom told me she had a headache and wanted to get off the phone. The timing of her headache seemed very suspicious to me so I texted her immediately after we hung up the phone and asked if I could drive over to her home and talk in person. Initially, my mother told me no that she didn’t feel up to a conversation and this seemed to further reveal she was hiding something. The next day while Peggy and I were attending a conference in Atlanta I received a text from my mom saying I was ready to meet if I would like to. I immediately told Peggy and we packed up our stuff and headed for her home which is about 1 and a half hours from Atlanta.

The drive to my mother’s home was surreal.

I was thinking about the DNA and Finland and what could this possibly mean. Whatever the story was it seemed pretty certain I was 50% Finnish at this point. The question was where did I get this DNA from? Was Tom Watson not my father? How could that possibly be true? He was my anchor and the most stable person in my young adult life. He was a wonderful loving father and yet I knew he had adopted my older brother Jimmy. Had he adopted me as well? This felt almost impossible but perhaps true.

When we arrived at my mom’s home and she opened the door she had already been crying and she hugged Peggy and asked if we hated her.

At this moment I think I realized it was true and that Tom Watson wasn’t my dad.

She had confessed in her opening apology. Now the question was who was my biological father and how did they keep me in the dark for 54 years? Did my biological father know I existed at all? Did my dad know I might not be his biological son? Did my mother have any information that might help me find my biological father? Soon after this day, I typed an email to some friends explaining my circumstances and asking them to remember me in prayer. This is the email I sent to them…

Mar 26, 2021

“Your words, calls, and texts were a great encouragement to me in these last days and hours. Since I last texted most of you I have found my biological father through the help of a DNA detective who volunteered to help. She has been an angel. I always knew I did not favor my siblings and even asked at times who I favored in the family. Turns out my mother sat next to Antti Erick Nordlin on a bus traveling from Los Angeles to Los Vegas in the spring of 1966. He was attractive by all confessions and a great conversationalist. A businessman from Finland. He had only been in the States for a brief time but would eventually make the west coast his home. Records reveal he was married when they met but his wife and two children were still in Finland and would not come to the States till later that year. My mom says he never told her those details. They talked while on the 5-hour trip and then had a night together. My mom was 19 years old and struggling to feel loved or wanted. He was 10 years older than her. They spent that evening together and the next day he left for his business meeting mom says he probably never thought about her again. She met my father who raised me that same week and began a relationship while now calling Los Vegas her home. Within weeks she knew she was pregnant and when she told my dad he was excited and wanted to move back to Atlanta and start a family. She confessed to him that the baby might not be his but he said he wanted to move forward and not mention that again.

As I grew it became more obvious to my mom that I was Erik’s son because she said I looked just like him. My mom confessed through tears, shame, fear, and embarrassment. Within days the DNA detective found the man she believed to be my father and I personally messaged one of my biological sisters and told her the story. She agreed to send me some pictures of him. I will attach them as well as a picture of Kristina my Finnish sister who has been helping me the most.

I have 4 siblings from him. 2 boys, 2 girls.

 Markus Nordlin, Kathy (Nordlin) Jaquez, Michael Nordlin, Kristina Nordlin

Just before this began I started to read John Piper’s 700-page book on Providence. God knew Antti Erick Nordlin would sit on a bus next to a broken 19-year-old girl for 5 hours and that the end game would be me. I’m finite and do not know what all God might want or do from this but I pray to faithfully trust Him and He gets to be the author of my story. What a weird story it is. Thank you all for praying and being such a family to me. It seems I’m a Finnish man named Nordlin and not Clint Watson at times.

This picture is with my new Nordlin family from last July 2021.

As you can see they are sweet and fun people that have accepted me and my family graciously. So much to process as it is all still only just beginning to settle in and it has been a year as I write.

My first cousin Marie on the far left and then Markus, Kathy, me, Kristina, and Michael