IF ever there were an appropriate emotional response to finding out all at once that you have a daughter and that she had been given up for adoption 37 years ago, it would likely be shock.

That was Lenworth Spence’s reaction when the Jamaican, who resides in the United States, found out in February that he has another offspring — only, he didn’t know about her existence before then.

It all started with a message on Ancestry.com from Elena Bonilla-Baptiste.

“I came home from work one night and Marsha, my wife, she was on Ancestry.com looking at the different traits you get from your parents, and we were looking at her traits that she got from her parents,” Lenny, as he’s affectionately called, told the Jamaica Observer in a recent interview.

Curious, he, too, wanted to know the traits that came from his parents. So they checked his page on the subscription-based website that provides access to genealogical records, family trees, and DNA testing services.

“That’s when I saw a message from Elena. Marsha said, ‘It says here that you have a 50 per cent match with someone.’ So I’m like, ‘What does that mean?’

“She said, ‘It seems as if you have a daughter out there or something,’” recounted the 59-year-old, who is originally from Savanna-la-Mar, Westmoreland.

A transparent Marsha, who was born in Canada but is of Jamaica parentage, admitted to the Sunday Observer that they were originally circumspect.

“We thought it was a fraud, somebody a try tek weh we money out there, because you know how they have fraud and they’re like, ‘Send me your money, your child’s in jail,’ or something crazy,” she said as both Lenworth and Bonilla-Baptiste listened.

She added that no one could have prepared them for the moment of finding out that her husband had a new child that is not a newborn, but an adult who has been existing without their knowledge.

Confirmation came for Lenworth when Elena disclosed the name of her biological mother. He did, in fact, know her.

“Once we saw pictures of Elena and her beautiful daughter Ariana — she is the spitting image of my husband — we could not believe it,” said Marsha.

Within 24 hours they had their first telephone conversation with his new daughter.

Then followed the other emotions: fear, anger, frustration, disappointment; and Lenworth — a man of very few words — feeling cheated.

“When we first found out about it, it was maybe about two weeks of sleepless nights…I feel we went through all the negative emotions first, because he felt it was something that was taken from him that he had no control over — that’s the hardest thing.

“I think it is a little bit different when you are aware of the choices you make and knowing that it can come to fruition, but when you don’t know it is a shock that you cannot prepare for,” explained Marsha, who has been by her husband’s side every step of the way.

“One of the things he said to me is, ‘I’m just so glad that God protected her, because just what it would do to a person emotionally, thinking that you were not chosen, thinking that you were not wanted, and you don’t know the circumstances around that,’ ” she explained to the Sunday Observer while acknowledging that people give their children up for adoption for various reasons.

On the other side of the coin, Bonilla-Baptiste was also experiencing her own set of emotions.

She’d created her Ancestry.com account five years prior, but had not done much more since then. However, for her birthday earlier this year, the 37-year-old decided she wanted to know more about her ancestors and got the DNA testing kit, fully cognisant that her biological father might also have an account on the website.

And, he did, as both Lenworth and Marsha had created profiles on the platform more than a decade ago.

“I was like, ‘I’m not sure what I’m going to find, but I’m still going to go ahead and do it.’ I got my result right before my birthday [on March 1]…He was on there and he was like the first thing I saw when I saw my result.

“I was with my husband [at the time, and] I was in shock. I couldn’t even really think about anything, I just gave him the phone and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, he is on here.’ My husband knew exactly what I was talking about, and so I just started stalking him…trying to find out as much as I could,” Bonilla-Baptiste said.

Eventually, she mustered up the courage to send the introductory message to Lenworth.

“It is just one of those things when you’re going into something, you don’t know what’s going to happen, you don’t know what the outcome is going to be, you don’t know what the reaction is going to be, especially me being so much older,” Bonilla-Baptiste reasoned. “How do I interrupt this man’s life? He has a family, he has a life. I didn’t want to feel like I was intruding on someone, but, at the same time, I had questions and I felt like, ‘What if he does want to get to know me?’

“So I just kind of had to build that courage up, take the test, and get the results, and once I got the results, reach out,” she added. “Because, I didn’t want to leave that open-ended, and I felt that the same way I could see him on the site, he could see me, and I didn’t want him to be blindsided and be like, ‘Who is this 37-year-old woman?’” she said.

Bonilla-Baptiste explained to the Sunday Observer that she was born in New Jersey and was adopted at three days old. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, with her adopted brother Jeremy Bonilla, they always knew they were adopted because of how open their parents were with them.

“My birth mother was involved with the Jehovah’s Witnesses and my parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses, so I guess one of the reasons they got me, in terms of how the adoption agency placed the children, [is] because they did it according to my birth mother’s wishes. So I was raised Jehovah’s Witness,” said Bonilla-Baptiste.

When she was younger, because her adoption was never a secret, she wasn’t as interested in knowing her birth family.

“You are a child, you’re connected to the family that you have. But, of course, as you get older, that’s when you start to have more questions. And as I got older, I was just getting more and more interested in who I am related to by blood,” Bonilla-Baptiste explained.

She said, too, that though she had a closed adoption, by the time she was 30 years old she was able to access her original birth certificate without petitioning the court due to a policy change by then New Jersey Governor Christopher Christie that allowed adoptees access to their birth records.

She found her birth mother’s name and that’s what got the ball rolling, which stopped at Lenworth’s feet.

“It’s been seven years since I’ve known [my birth mother], but when I brought up the question of who’s my father, she didn’t really give me much information. She did give me her side [or] her story, which I went with, obviously, because why wouldn’t I?

“But it is just certain things she told me, it kind of made me hesitant about looking [for my biological dad]. So it took me a few years, but you know, I want to know who my father is, I’ve always had that question my entire life,” said Bonilla-Baptiste.

And Ancestry.com entered the chat.

Now, Bonilla-Baptiste is a big sister to Lenworth’s six other children and he’s a grandfather of three, including her daughter. She’s moved from having one adoptive brother to 12 siblings, including her birth mother’s other children.

“At first it was so overwhelming, but I love it because, growing up, it was just myself and my brother, and I always wanted to have little brothers; I always wanted to have more siblings and now I have that. It happened much older and later on in life, but still I’m really grateful and I love them all,” Bonilla-Baptiste said.

One month after their first telephone call, she and her daughter flew to Florida from New York to meet Lenworth and the rest of the family.

“Once we landed and got off the plane, Marsha and Lenny met us at the airport — you should’ve seen it,” a gushing Bonilla-Baptiste said, adding that they saw Marsha first and they were immediately embraced.

“And then we saw my pops right after, and it was just so good to actually hold him… this is half of my DNA…” she recalled to the Sunday Observer.

“I was trying to hold back my tears, yuh nuh,” Lenworth chimed in as he shared how he felt upon meeting her for the first time in person.

They spent five days together on that trip and Bonilla-Baptiste said being with her siblings, along with Marsha and Lenny felt just like home.

“It made me want to move here to Florida, because so much time has been lost and we can make up for it now, and now I can be closer to them,” she said.

Among them, the shared emotion is now one of pure joy and a yearning to make up for lost time.

“I’m not gonna go chase her [biological mother] and make a big deal out of it, the damage is already done,” said Lenworth as he and Marsha shared that they are now working out the details of helping to make Bonilla-Baptiste’s move to Florida a reality.

In fact, when the Sunday Observer spoke to the trio last month, Bonilla-Baptiste was back in Florida for her second visit since meeting her biological father.

“You know how they say blood is thicker than water, this is a real-life example, because ideally we are strangers, but beyond the surface we are connected and there is a bond that no one could’ve anticipated.

“The closeness that I’ve seen with Lenny, Elena, and myself, in addition to that of our four children and Lenny’s seven children in total, is just a miracle,” Marsha said, adding, at the time, that it has been less than 90 days since finding out that Bonilla-Baptiste was his daughter.

“We are trying to get as much time in as a family, because we’ve missed out on so many milestones — she is now a mom, she is a wife, she is also a big sister to many, so we are just trying to catch up on this time,” said Marsha.

Bonilla-Baptiste’s adoptive parents — Louis and Amy Bonilla — have been very supportive, with her mother telling Marsha and Lenworth’s boys that they can call her grandma.

“That was what brought Lenny to tears,” said Marsha. “He didn’t cry when he met her because he held it in, but when he heard Elena’s mother say, ‘Please call me grandma,’ that was just an affirmation of acceptance, so we love that.”

Besides Bonilla-Baptiste and her family’s plan to move to Florida to be closer to her now bigger, blended family, they are also planning a few trips, including one to Jamaica.

“There’s nothing more important than family for us, and Elena feels the same way,” said Marsha.

Today celebrating his first Father’s Day with Bonilla-Baptiste, Lenworth is grateful, though the original plan to spend it with her in New York has changed due to the death of his mother Winnifred Spence.

“Instead, we will be preparing for her burial and celebrating her legacy and her abundance of love that she has poured into Elena and our entire family,” Marsha said on Friday. “She passed at the age of 93 and leaves behind her beloved husband, Selvyn Spence. They have four children together and Lenny has a total of seven children and three grandchildren that will continue to honour her memory and legacy. Elena and Ariana will be travelling to Florida again and will be part of a big celebration and a reunion in her honour.”

The result that got the ball rolling and led American Elena Bonilla-Baptiste to connect with her biological father, Jamaican Lenworth Spence.

Lenworth Spence with Elena Bonilla-Baptiste’s daughter Ariana, who the family believes is the spitting image of her biological grandfather.

Lenworth Spence (second right) with his parents, Selvyn Spence (left) and Winnifred Spence (right) who are from Westmoreland, and biological daughter Elena Bonilla-Baptiste. Bonilla-Baptiste met her grandparents a month after first connecting with her biological dad. Her grandmother has since passed.

Lenworth Spence (left) with his seven children (from left) Zaylen, Zayvien, Zayvier, Chris, Zayne, Elena and Camille.

Lenworth Spence’s wife Marsha and his biological daughter Elena Bonilla-Baptiste snap a quick photo together.

A screengrab of the introductory message Elena Bonilla-Baptiste sent to her biological father, Lenworth Spence, after she received the results of her DNA test through Ancestry.com

Lenworth Spence and his biological daughter Elena Bonilla-Baptiste are pictured together on her second visit to Florida since connecting with him earlier this year. Spence found out about her existence through Ancestry.com, after Bonilla-Baptiste did a DNA test and reached out to him.