Family Twist Episode 32: Finding an Enormous Family Across the Globe

Our guest this episode is Tim Curran, Copy Editor/Lead Writer for "Early Start" on CNN. We found Tim via a great article he wrote about finding his family. Tim was adopted in California, and after years of searching for his birth family, made the exciting discovery that his birth father was from Morocco. Tim found a half brother and dozens of cousins, aunts and uncles. He had an amazing adventure in the summer of 2022, visiting his new family near Casablanca.

Guest link: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/dna-ancestry-trail-to-find-birth-family-morocco/index.html

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00:01

00:31

and the adventure continues. Thanks for joining us again on Family Twist. Our guest today is Tim Curran, a copy editor and lead writer for Early Start on CNN. And Tim, I listened to your show a few weeks ago, actually, on a very early morning drive from New Hampshire to New York. Oh, yeah. It is, it's early no matter where you are, or very late on the West Coast, but yes, it takes a hearty soul to...

01:00

to be a regular watcher of our show or just somebody who never sleeps. I stumbled across an article you wrote for CNN's website that was really intriguing. You talk about your found family journey and especially now as we're dealing with horrible nasty snowy weather here in New England, it will be wonderful to hear you talk about visiting Marrakesh and meeting some family. But before we get into that, you know,

01:29

California for nine years and it seems like the show keeps bringing us back to California. You've got some some rich history in California. So can you talk a little bit about your adoption in California? Yeah I was adopted as a as a baby in San Francisco so I only knew my adoptive parents as my parents like any

01:57

adopted kid, I was curious about my, um, you know, what my birth parents were like. I didn't know very much about them. Initially, I didn't know anything about them. Uh, but I then came to, you know, once I grew up, uh, enough to sort of look into it, uh, as a teenager, I requested adoption records. California has, uh,

02:25

closed adoptions, the state adoptions are sealed, of course, but you can request an edited copy of your records where they will let you, they strip out all the non-identifying information. Takes quite a while because someone has to do that manually, but they go through your adoption file and they give you a stripped down version of that file.

02:51

So I knew a few things. I knew my mother was from the Midwest. She was 19 when I was born. She was ethnically white. She said my father was Cuban. I didn't know her name. There was again, no identifying information. So there was no way to track her down. I grew up in San Francisco and the East Bay, mostly Berkeley and Oakland. Went to high school in Oakland.

03:21

And about the time, I guess I was in my mid twenties, California changed the laws and you could get a much more, uh, rich version of your adoption file. Again, with non-identifying information stripped out, but they were allowed to put a lot more in. Uh, and I did learn a few things, but it still wasn't enough to track down my, uh, birth parents.

03:51

Years later in my thirties, I, uh, found a volunteer adoption researcher who looked into my, you know, I gave her all the information I had and she came back with a name. So I knew my birth mother's name and my birth name and, uh, a weird version of my father's name. It was.

04:20

misspelled or literally no one in the world has that name. Uh, but, uh, it was very common name, mine and hers. So there was no chance that I could track her down. So that was the end of it. I felt like I had put all the effort I could into finding my birth parents. Um, and they're the matter kind of

04:50

rested for many years until someone invented 23andMe and Ancestry.com. And, you know, this is now becoming a more and more common story. So I'll leave it there for now. Yes, it's a little very familiar with how Ancestry works because that's how we ended up doing this show when discovering Kendall's birth family here on the East Coast.

05:19

How supportive were your adoptive parents when you finding your birth family? Very, my adoptive mom was very encouraging. I had always, I'd grown up knowing that I was adopted. So it was never a secret, it was never, you know, something to be ashamed of. And she, as far as I know, never felt competitive with my birth mother.

05:48

I mean, she knew she was my mom and there was never any question about it. So that was kind of the end of that. And she was very, very, uh, encouraging.

06:01

And has been all the way through this process, by the way, I should say from beginning to end, she's been kind of excited. Yeah. Excellent. So talk to us a little bit of what you discovered when she started doing the 23 and mean ancestry and you've got your results back. What did you see initially?

06:20

I hadn't even thought of 23andMe or, you know, getting my DNA analyzed until I started to do a family tree for my adoptive family. I was just curious and started plugging some names in and there are some very unusual names on my adoptive family tree. So

06:48

It wasn't very hard to start building an extremely elaborate, rich family tree. I, you know, working on standing on the shoulders of other people who had. Previously done our family or parts of our family. I was able to go back into the 14th century. So it was very, very fascinating stuff. And that led me.

07:16

to, you know, it's just kind of, it dawned on me one day that I could apply those same skills to finding my birth family. Um, the names alone, again, too common to be helpful, even using ancestry. So I did my DNA and the first surprise, big surprise was that I was not half Cuban.

07:46

uh, on my father's side, but half Moroccan, uh, that is to say my father was clearly born in Morocco. So that kind of rocked my world. And for a while I started to try to figure out, well, how could a Moroccan have, uh, come through Cuba or some, I came up with all kinds of cockamamie theories about how, uh, you know, to try and keep

08:16

my mother's report to the state adoption agency, try to keep that true and correct, but it just, it made no sense really. Um, and there, there were also a few very strong hits, uh, DNA matches in ancestry and also in 23andMe.

08:43

but particularly on Ancestry's DNA service, I had a 25% match, which can only be your grandfather, your grandson, or a half sibling. Those are the only possibilities. And, you know, my grandfather would be 130-some now, and my grandson doesn't exist because I have no children, so therefore it could only be a half sibling.

09:13

And, uh, wow. That person's name was Michael something. Um, as you probably know, everyone, not everyone, but most people using these services, put in usernames that are. Fancy full in some way, their initials or first initial last name or first name, last initial or whatever their dog's name. Um,

09:42

So it can be, you have to use a lot of speculation. The first thing I did of course, was I, for people who were clearly close, my half brother and all these first cousins who popped up, several first cousins, naturally I just reached out through the service. You know, you're allowed to send messages through Ancestry and 23andMe.

10:13

But no one answered. And I'm told that this is very common, that people rarely answer. They rarely even notice the email because it just gets lumped in with all the junk email that those services send you. So no one responded. Luckily, I'm a journalist. And I had experience using Ancestry.com to build my adoptive family tree. And I...

10:41

As a trained journalist, I know how to find people. So I know all the tips. I knew all the tips and tricks going into it. So I began to stitch together a partly speculative family tree, um, based on what I knew, and then using public records databases, I found, uh, contact information, email phone numbers for the people whose names.

11:10

I knew and whose names were at least reasonably unusual. And that ultimately, I tried to reach out to my half brother but I only had one apparently old phone number for him. He wasn't a very online guy. So, and he didn't respond through dn, ancestry.com. So I...

11:39

found a cousin who was young enough to be kind of, you know, fully online. And I reached out to him at the phone number that I had. I mean, I worked up a script basically for reaching out to people because I didn't wanna stumble around and try to ad lib.

12:06

You know, such crucial, such a crucial first contact. So I had a little email script and a little phone script that I stuck, more or less stuck to when I called. And to my surprise, I got a call back from this cousin's phone number almost immediately. And it was his mother. He, uh,

12:35

You know, no longer lived there. He'd grown up at that phone number, but had not been there in a long time. But, uh, you know, she was super warm and helpful. And once she realized, uh, you know, I wasn't a scammer or something like that. She put me in touch with my cousin who then put me in touch with this whole Moroccan side of the family. And so were you, were you calling Morocco?

13:05

No, no, he was in California. He'd grown up in California. Uh, his mother was Belgian. So she was the, um, ex wife of my father's eldest brother. There was a whole long story about how she had fled in the middle of the night with her two kids because the laws being what they are in Morocco, favoring the father.

13:34

14:04

occasional visits to Morocco. So my cousin, you know, was not here for the, by that same route. His mother had sort of taken him and his sisters to California, but he had grown up a California boy. I didn't wind up speaking to Moroccan relatives for, until weeks later. And I'm guessing that none of this family had any idea that you existed. That is correct.

14:34

The only people who knew I existed were my birth mother's little sister, who, and she only knew because my mother had reached out to her mother, my grandmother for help when she discovered she was pregnant and this little sister was still living at home, so she was kind of read in on the whole secret. But

15:03

No one on my father's side knew I existed because he didn't know I existed, presumably. And my mother's other siblings also were never told. It had been this sort of shameful Catholic family secret. So just so it happens that you heard the little sister would just happen to be at home. The rest of the siblings weren't around. So they just kept it a secret. And it was also a very, that my mother's family are pretty.

15:33

They're all a little bit estranged from each other. It's not like they hate each other, but it was a very difficult upbringing. It was not a good situation at home, and they had all gotten out as soon as possible. And I think they were also traumatized by their childhoods that they weren't very much in touch with each other, like from their teens onward.

16:03

sort of, you know, the annual Christmas phone call situation. Wow. Gotcha.

16:11

So you've discovered this large Moroccan family from your birth father. How did you happen upon finding out more about your birth mother's family?

16:24

Um, it was sort of the same thing where I put together a family tree piece by piece, inference by inference, um, found a few, uh, names that were distinctive enough and reached out to a couple of people who it turned out all the facts matched. And so, uh, I realized that they were, they were my

16:54

blood relatives and they accepted it because I, I, you know, it was, I had a very solid, I'd done my research at the time I reached out. There were, every time I reached out to someone, there was always a question. How do you know? How do you know for sure? So if I had, you know, one of the tips I would sort of give is that when you start reaching out

17:24

Have a script, have a plan, know what you're gonna say. And for heaven's sake.

17:32

be able to like in an elevator pitch length, like be able in 30 seconds to explain how you know for sure. Because if you wind up having to, you know, you need to be able to ask just a few questions to confirm they are who you think they are. And questions by the way that don't seem too invasive because people won't answer invasive questions. And the moment you've confirmed who they are, you need to have be able to explain

18:02

who you are to them and how you know for sure. Right. Because I mean, as we say on this show, you know, DNA doesn't lie, but if you're having to go a different route than Ancestry or 23andMe, it's probably very helpful that you are a journalist and were able to do your research and have your facts straight before approaching these folks. Yeah, I mean, it certainly helps if you're speaking to a person to whom you, you know, who they themselves,

18:31

have had their DNA done by 23andMe or ancestry and you're the 12% or 25% match. Um, in those cases, uh, you know, you're on quite solid ground, but I think those are fairly rare. Usually there are some relative of that person or there you're making some inferences.

18:59

And you need to be able to explain what those inferences are in a very brief way that's convincing. Right. Now prior to this discovery, had you ever been to Morocco or anywhere near Morocco? Oh, heck no. I, uh, I'd never been anywhere, but the Americas and Europe. So yeah, I didn't know much about it. Certainly.

19:27

Had no notion whatsoever that, uh, you know, I came from a Muslim family. So just a gigantic, um, cultural disconnect to kind of leap across. So what steps did you take to sort of start to get to know this family? Well, I was again, had this, I had this cousin who was. Introduce me to my brother.

19:57

My cousin had been born in Morocco. My brother, although born also in San Francisco, um, had visited, you know, was connected to the Moroccan family. He was a legitimate child of my father. So he had always known he was Moroccan had visited Morocco. And so between those two, they served as my bridge, my ambassadors to the family.

20:25

My cousin in particular was helpful because he spoke French. The family speaks French. Um, and you know, he was sort of more culturally competent. Um, but.

20:41

it, they're very warm and welcoming Moroccans in general and my family in particular. And they were, you know, if my cousin believed I was, uh, legitimate son of my father or illegitimate son of my father, uh, that was good enough for them. My father, uh, uh, Larby, uh, what was his name? Uh,

21:09

was much beloved in the family. He was definitely the black sheep, the crazy uncle who had stepped on a plane in his early 20s and never looked back. And years later began visiting Morocco with gifts from America and stuff. So they all loved him and he was a very warm, kind, generous guy by everyone's account. By the way,

21:39

that my cousin's mother, my step aunt, I guess you'd call her, one of the things she said was, I knew your father well and he was a lovely, lovely man, super funny and kind and generous, also a terrible womanizer. So, it kind of made perfect sense that to all of them,

22:08

that even though no one knew I existed, it was a surprise to no one that he had at least one illegitimate child roaming around in the world and perhaps more. Yep. We joke about my biological father the same way. My half brother, Chris, and I always say that we think that every time we open an ancestor, we're gonna find another sibling. It hasn't been that case, but.

22:37

You know, it would not surprise any of us or my dad. My brother told me that that our father had once didn't speak about, you know, his romantic life apart from his mother. His his ex that is my father's ex-wife, my half brother's father apart from his relationship with her.

23:05

He didn't speak much about his romantic life except to say that, uh, don't be surprised if it turns out there's a, another, uh, sister in Las Vegas. So far we don't know if that's, you know, she hasn't turned up. We don't know if that's the case, but, uh, I went from having one first cousin in my

23:33

adoptive family to now having 27 first cousins on my father's side alone. Wow. To say nothing of my mother's side. Wow. So it's been quite a, an adjustment. Sounds like a pretty exciting one too. I mean, can you talk to us a little bit about the impetus of the trip of getting to meet the family in Morocco?

23:54

From the almost the very beginning, they, again, as I say, they were very welcoming. And so they immediately started sending me pictures, pictures of, you know, old family photos of my father and his parents. And my family owns some houses by the beach near Casablanca, fairly well to do family of builders and architects.

24:24

And so they started sending me pictures of the view from their back deck, which abuts directly on the Atlantic ocean. I mean, like literally 10 meters from their back door is the Atlantic. It's crazy. So they started sending me these beautiful pictures of sunset over the Atlantic. That summer, the whole family decamps from.

24:52

various places in Morocco and all around the world. There's a whole branch of the family in Paris. Again, Morocco is a French speaking country, my family being well-to-do, they were all educated in Paris. Most of them returned to Morocco, but a certain number stayed behind in Paris. So they all started sending me these photos and saying, you really must come and stay with us next summer.

25:22

Uh, at, you know, in our, in our little beach compound in Darboza near, near Casablanca. And of course I was like, heck yeah. So that's great. Get to meet you all in person. Plus, you know, a summer or at least a couple of weeks at the shore and getting to know my father's birth birthplace. So of course I said yes. And the family's own that property.

25:48

for years and years and years, uh, since my father was in his early teens, like 12, 13, 14, something like that. So it's been in the family and they've been building and rebuilding on that property for decades now. And it's just beautiful. Is I just astounding. So yeah, I immediately jumped at the chance to see that experience that

26:18

uh, eat Moroccan food, dip my toe in Moroccan culture and get to know all of them. And so, uh, I timed it, set it up so that I would be going with my cousin, the same cousin, my first point of contact. We set it all up so he and his wife, like we landed at the airport within 20 minutes of each other. Wow.

26:46

So he was literally my guide all the way through this experience of meeting the family, going to Darboza and all that. And then, uh, another cousin and her husband run a luxury travel company. So they set me up on a, uh, week long tour of Fez and Marrakech. So I could see. Other, you know, other main cities in Morocco, and that was astounding. I recommend.

27:16

Lux travel for everyone. Wow. So when was this? When did you get to do that? This was last summer. Okay. Wow. So still quite fresh. Quite fresh. Yes. And that was the impetus to write the piece for cnn.com was what that experience was like, well, what the whole experience has been like, a, a, a, a view of.

27:46

my whole, you know, just getting your DNA done, how that can kind of launch you. No matter where you are in your life or what time you are in your life, launch you on this fantastic adventure that very often is unexpected. I think most people who get their DNA analyzed do it because they want to find out more about their ethnicity or their health conditions or, um, you know, to confirm that, uh, you know,

28:14

great aunt Sally was really great aunt Sally, whatever. But they have no notion that they are connecting themselves to this whole.

28:27

infrastructure database that can have extremely unexpected consequences for, you know, pleasant or unpleasant. Very true. I mean, never did I think or assume that I had any connection to New England. And not only do I have lots of family here, but that's where I was conceived, you know, and I never, because I was born in Arkansas.

28:55

I never thought that I was conceived anywhere else, but just circumstances beyond a lot of people's control.

29:06

Yeah. And not only that, but you don't even have to get your DNA done to wind up having people pop out of the woodwork as I did for like most of my Moroccan and my, uh, my father's and my mother's families, most of them had not had their DNA done, but they're suddenly discovering that, you know, their sister had to, you know, a child they knew nothing about, um,

29:35

Clearly out of wedlock, this Catholic girl, who was in an unwed mother's home in San Francisco. My father, my half brother, is exactly seven months older than me. Now, you can do the math on that, and anyone can do the math on that, and realize that that meant that while he had a girlfriend pregnant at home, seven months pregnant, he was...

30:05

out meeting girls. Yep. Now, luckily, as I said, everyone knew who he was. He knew who he was and the whole family knew who he was, what kind of a guy he was, you know, his, his finer qualities and maybe less wonderful qualities. And so it wasn't a surprise, but for a lot of families, it would be a surprise. It might be a surprise to you. So,

30:35

I would never discourage anyone from having their DNA analyzed, but I would say, know what you're getting yourself into and also be aware that the world we live in now.

30:49

those surprises could come from any corner at any time. And if, for example, you gave a child up for adoption, the promises that were made to you that the state would keep that a secret are now inoperative. It's true. Those promises are no longer valid. Right. And if you had a child out of wedlock and put it up for adoption, there's nothing stopping that child from reaching out to you. Surprise.

31:19

Right? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And, you know, I'm sure people that never dreamt that DNA was going to be, you know, part of the equation are probably some people are probably resentful of the other people who wanted to keep it a secret, you know, and, um, just the way it is, you know, it's, and as an adoptee, of course, I'm very happy that it turned out the way that it did. Yeah. And I, I, I have a very realistic.

31:49

view of this, which is that if not for secret sealed state adoptions, I, there's a good chance I would never have been born. Right. So, you know, thank goodness that the state promised to keep a secret and I'm sorry that, uh, you know, that, that secret's no longer operative. I tried to be as.

32:15

gentle, oblique, sensitive as I could be when I was reaching out, but it wasn't going to stop me from reaching out. Right. I am completely with you. I think, I think it's our birthright to, to have some knowledge, you know, and while I understand why states did it, um, for the secrecy, it just, there's so many times when it, I can't believe that that's the way that it all happened because

32:41

33:10

at the hospital, my adoptive mother was never in the hospital, never stepped foot in the hospital where it says that she gave birth to me. It's just, it's insane to me that that is even, you know, I'd rather have a blank birth certificate than one that just lies. I knew that they were lies and I accepted it, you know, early, early on, but it was just bizarre to me that that was ethical. But whatever. Yeah, I don't

33:40

I don't actually know how it seals state adoptions work now, but it's, it would be an interesting, uh, Journalistically, an interesting story to tell, like how, uh, the availability of, of DNA testing is, has affected sealed state adoptions. Like the, the, the state cannot in good faith make the promises now that it once made. And.

34:09

people are too savvy to take a falsified, that is to say reissued birth certificate at face value. Right. I mean, because you open mine and you know, it's got the seal. You know what I'm saying? It doesn't, yeah, it doesn't, there's no indication. There's no indication on my birth certificate, my reissued birth certificate, that it's anything but.

34:39

the first legitimate birth certificate, which was in those days at least, to enable parents to keep the secret from the child forever that the child was adopted. By modern ethical standards, I just don't know how they justify it, but maybe, I have no idea actually, it's a good question. Yeah, yeah, that is kind of fascinating to me, that whole.

35:08

angle because you know, thankfully it sounds like you and I came from families where it was never a secret. And so it was never going to be hidden from us, but you know, think about all the people that still don't know that they should go on and look at into DNA because they have no assumption that they're living, you know, under false. Pretenses. Well, I, I, I have a slightly different view on that, which is that people should

35:36

People shouldn't ask the question if they are not ready to hear the answer. And I think it happens quite a bit that people get their DNA done. Think they may have been adopted because they don't look like their parents or whatever, so they're curious and they want to confirm that they're their parents, children. And so they're, they're not really ready to hear the answer. I think it's not uncommon for people to get DNA testing without really

36:04

thinking it through. And so I am an advocate for thinking it through, thinking through all the consequences, all the good and bad news that you might hear and really examining your heart, talking with your friends or your spiritual guide or whoever to be sure you're actually ready and the rest of your family are ready to learn the truth. Right.

36:33

It's a good point because, you know, Corey and I came, went into my situation hoping for the best, of course, and not on my mother's side, not getting that at all. And that's okay, but I never dreamt that I wouldn't five years later have some relationship with this woman. And I don't. And at this point, I don't even know if I care. I mean, of course I care to some degree, but

37:00

I feel like she's had five years and she's ignored me and she called me tomorrow and listened to her but my feelings are very different than they were five years ago about having quote found her.

37:16

Oh, well, you're well, that is something I think that is very important when you're, when you go in search of your birth parents. And I was, at least I think I was, you have to be prepared for rejection. You have to be prepared for them not to welcome you with open, open arms. I couldn't have been more lucky in that. Uh, well, both of my birth parents were dead.

37:44

My mother actually died during the process of searching for her, but I never met her.

37:53

I don't know what their reactions would have been by all accounts. They would have been welcoming. Their families were certainly very welcoming. I was very lucky, uh, especially considering the fact that, and this is common with adoption, that, uh, my, uh, birth parents were not married, seemingly barely knew each other. It was, you know, not the, not a, uh,

38:21

a storybook romance, let's put it that way. So I was very lucky to be welcomed with open arms by their families, but I think a more common experience, a more expected experience would be to be rejected by them and you better be ready for that. For sure, for sure. I'm on a couple of different Facebook groups for, you know.

38:46

DNA, you know, help me with my DNA or DNA detectives. And there are so many stories of just like, they're heartbreaking, you know, because people are, you know, they've gotten their hopes up for years and years and then, you know, come to get, you know, it ended in rejection and not the closure that they were looking for. You put too much on it. If you go into it with your hopes too high, you'll inevitably be crushed. I think if my hopes were low,

39:15

Um, if my hopes had even as welcoming as my family were, if my hopes had been, if I'd expected too much, I don't think they could possibly have lived up to it. It's a good point. I was, I was sufficiently delusional about being, you know, not accepted. I've all I've never. It sounds really conceited for me to say that, but in my life, I've never felt rejected and I thought when I found.

39:45

both sides of this family. You know, it was 30 years between the death of my adoptive dad and when I found my biological dad and my mother had been dead for 37 years. So for me, it wasn't a point of desperation, but it was like, who could not wanna talk to me knowing that I'd been, you know what I mean? Like an only child that didn't have parents for that long. And so...

40:14

Do I have some resentment toward my birth mother because she hasn't reached out? It's like, really? Your biological child didn't have a mother for 37 years and you don't wanna connect with, whatever. I can't, I don't even know. I don't wanna connect with my mom. You represent, I mean, it's not about you, obviously. It's about all the, about how difficult, almost certainly it's about how difficult the circumstances of your birth were.

40:43

Absolutely. Not wanting to, you know, having put all that behind her and not wanting to revisit what was probably a very painful situation for her at the time. And it may have taken her years and years and years to get over it. It's not about you. It's about that experience that you for all intents and purposes had nothing to do with. Right. Yeah. You can't take it personally is what I'm saying. Oh, I know. It's just hard not to write like.

41:13

course, and, and I'm not good at rejection, apparently. I think Corey knows that wholeheartedly, I just, I usually get my way. And I'm not bossy. But I usually do still get my way. And I just I feel like she needs to experience my charisma so that I can, you know, try to prove, you know, I'm teasing. I mean, at some level, but I do feel like, you know,

41:40

I'd like to have that shot, right? I'd like to, uh, to get to prove, you know, that I'm worthy to speak to, but you're right, Tim, she's, she's still wallowing in this, you know, 52 year old Meyer that she was in and, um, can't. Also, you know, like a lot of things in life, it's just out of your hands. Absolutely. And I feel like I put.

42:09

Sort of undue pressure on both of her daughters, my half sisters at various points in these five years to say, you know, make it happen, make it happen, make us talk and that's not fair to them either because that's their mother. They're trying to protect her. Um, there's no good putting them in the middle. If you want to keep a relationship with them. Right. Exactly. And I've had to say that a few times. Oh yeah. And that's okay. I need to.

42:38

continue to be told, but it goes back to the, you know, I'm kind of, um, Oh, headstrong. Is that what you should say? Sure. Yeah. Sure. That's the kind diplomatic answer that Corey's going to agree to. You know, there's, there's still some pain there for sure. And, but you know, we'll just have to see what the future will bring. I mean, we're surprised.

43:05

continually surprised about what life has thrown at us. And so, and we've been able to take it and keep going. So, who knows? Well, you've turned it into your own great adventure with this podcast. Yep. Right, right. It's, yeah, that itself has been really rewarding. Just having to, being able to have conversations with people like you, it's been, is wonderfully rewarding. You know, it's, I'm an old school journalist too, and I've kind of...

43:33

shifted into the marketing side of things and not doing the day-to-day journalism anymore. So being able to do this is like, it keeps that part of me going, which is exciting. Yeah. And I mean, I get really emotional about lots of things, but Corey's exactly right. Hearing stories like yours, it just warms my heart. I mean, I love the experiences that you've gotten to have with your

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family. It's amazing. There's still a lot more to see and do. I want to go back to Morocco, maybe again this year to, uh, to see it's a big country. Um, and it's kind of elongated a bit like California. And so I, or Florida. So I, there's a lot of it that I haven't seen that I want to see. Uh, I have met, uh,

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Pretty much all of my first cousins, uh, on both sides of the family. But, um, for example, my family, my mother was born in, uh, Des Moines and her, her, oh, I guess all of her siblings also born in Des Moines. Um, they moved to California, San Diego when she was young. Um, but.

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I actually would love to go to Iowa and kind of soak up what, what that's like, because the family goes back in Iowa for generations and generations. Amazing. Well, you know, thinking about the fact that you definitely are still on this journey, you know, we'd love to have you back to hear more about, about how that goes. Absolutely. And I do, I am curious. How's your French coming along?

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Well, that's a good question. Um, I started, so as once I became, once it became clear that, you know, the spam, the family spoke French, uh, my Moroccan family all spoke French. I started taking French, uh, online and I made some decent progress, but it. Like learning any language, it becomes progressively more difficult. The further along you get.

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And I had not gotten as far as I really needed to, to be conversational by the time I went to Paris and Casablanca. But I kind of assumed, well, I don't need to worry too much about it because everyone my age and younger speaks English. And so to the extent that I need, uh, to speak to the older generation, um, there'll always be someone around to translate.

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Well, that didn't, I mean, it turned out that that wasn't really the issue. The issue is that French is the language of the dinner table. All conversations, unless they were conducted for my benefit, were conducted in French. Thank God it wasn't Arabic because Arabic is really hard to learn for an English speaker. French, not so much really. But they're just

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I mean, people were nice, nice enough to translate when I needed to hear something translated. Um, and even my aunts and uncles, although their English is really shaky, they, they made an effort. Um, and I made an effort to speak French, but I just was not there yet. So I wound up getting left out of a lot of conversations. Like I would just sort of sitting there smiling dumbly.

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while people would rattle on in French and I was missing it all. So I have committed to getting myself to a conversational level by the next time I go, which hopefully will be this summer, but we'll see how that goes. But that is my plan. Well, it's funny that French is the theme here because Cory's one of his cousins, we're really close with him.

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his name is Sean and his girlfriend Michelle and they moved to Switzerland this summer and of course most of their life is now speaking French and So we too are trying to make some stabs that right learning some So that we can be proficient in their tiny tiny village and the Alps so We will see. Oh wow. Yeah, that is a that that will be

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an interesting challenge. Uh, you know, it's, it is a little hard to learn a language when you get, get older, uh, not that I was any, you know, whiz at it when I was in my twenties either, my Spanish is better than my French. I will say that much. Yep. Me too. I was going to say I spent way too much time focused on Spanish and have forgotten what all I learned back then anyway, but

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Excellent. Well, as Kendall said, we were looking forward to hearing more about, um, your exciting journey as it unfolds since it's kind of happening in real time. Yeah, sure. I'd be happy to talk to you anytime. Cool. Wonderful. Well, Tim, thanks so much for being on here and, uh, and sharing your adventure. My, my pleasure. Thank you for asking me. Family Twist features original music from Cosmic Afterthoughts.

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