The age at which a person learns a secret like this matters enormously. A child who discovers that the people they call their parents are not their biological parents is in a very different psychological situation than a thirty-seven-year-old who makes the same discovery. For the child, the discovery can fundamentally destabilize the sense of who they are and where they belong. For the adult, it adds complexity to an already established self — it is new information rather than a foundational reconfiguration.
He has also said, in at least one account, that he was impressed by the family’s ability to keep the secret — “if nothing else.” This is a complicated compliment. The thing he is impressed by — the ability to maintain a thirty-seven-year deception — is also the thing that kept him from knowing his own origins for thirty-seven years. Impressed is not the same as grateful for the deception itself, but it is not resentment either. It is something more like recognition: these people kept something extraordinarily difficult to keep.
He said, in one version of the account drawn from the Cigar Aficionado interview: “Such is the price of fame. People start poking around in your private life, and the next thing you know your sister is actually your mother.” This formulation does something interesting: it locates the revelation within the context of fame rather than within the context of family dynamics. The discovery was not something that emerged from within the family. It was something that came from outside, from media investigation. Fame is what made him visible enough for researchers to look into his background. Without the fame, the secret might never have been uncovered.