when dad is no longer dad

 

Sir Anthony Montague Browne

Justin Welby

Talk about something to scramble the eggs of self-perception: It turns out that the Archbishop of Canterbury, top gun in the Anglican Church, was not the son of the man he had always thought of as his father. Instead, with 99.9779% probability, he was the one-night-stand offspring of Winston Churchill's private secretary.

On the one hand, who was actually his dad cannot undo or rewrite the upbringing of the Most Reverend Justin Welby, 60. On the other, what memories, what joys, what anguish must be rewritten in Welby's memory banks now that whisky salesman Gavin Welby

Gavin, Jane and Justin Welby

(deceased) has been supplanted by the late Sir Anthony Montague Browne?

What does anyone do -- what can they do -- when the presumptions of a lifetime -- so easy, so assured, so concrete -- are thrown into a cocked hat? Suppose your dad were not your dad. Suppose your mom were not your mom. Would anything change? How could it help but change ... but change how? Unless I'm wrong, such revelations contain about equal parts of plain-as-salt and somehow-unsettling.

Bring out your weird-shit-o-meters.