I really wasn't expecting anything the day, earlier this year, when I sent an e-mail to a man whose name I had found on the Internet. I was looking for my father, and in some ways this man fit the bill. But I never thought I'd hit pay dirt on my first try. Then I got a reply -- with a picture attached.
From my computer screen, my own face seemed to stare back at me. And just like that, after 17 years, the missing piece of the puzzle snapped into place.
The puzzle of who I am.
I'm 18, and for most of my life, I haven't known half my origins. I didn't know where my nose or jaw came from, or my interest in foreign cultures. I obviously got my teeth and my penchant for corny jokes from my mother, along with my feminist perspective. But a whole other part of me was a mystery.
That part came from my father. The only thing was, I had never met him, never heard any stories about him, never seen a picture of him. I didn't know his name. My mother never talked about him -- because she didn't have a clue who he was.
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When she was 32, my mother -- single, and worried that she might never marry and have a family -- allowed a doctor wearing rubber gloves to inject a syringe of sperm from an unknown man into her uterus so that she could have a baby. I am the result: a donor-conceived child.
And for a while, I was pretty angry about it.
I was angry at the idea that where donor conception is concerned, everyone focuses on the "parents" -- the adults who can make choices about their own lives. The recipient gets sympathy for wanting to have a child. The donor gets a guarantee of anonymity and absolution from any responsibility for the offspring of his "donation." As long as these adults are happy, then donor conception is a success, right?
Not so. The children born of these transactions are people, too. Those of us in the first documented generation of donor babies -- conceived in the late 1980s and early '90s, when sperm banks became more common and donor insemination began to flourish -- are coming of age, and we have something to say.
I'm here to tell you that emotionally, many of us are not keeping up. We didn't ask to be born into this situation, with its limitations and confusion. It's hypocritical of parents and medical professionals to assume that biological roots won't matter to the "products" of the cryobanks' service, when the longing for a biological relationship is what brings customers to the banks in the first place.
We offspring are recognizing the right that was stripped from us at birth -- the right to know who both our parents are.
And we're ready to reclaim it.Growing up, it didn't matter that I don't have a dad -- or at least that is what I told myself. Just sometimes, when I was small, I would daydream about a tall, lean man picking me up and swinging me around in the front yard, a manly man melting at a touch from his little girl. I wouldn't have minded if he weren't around all the time, as long as I could have the sweet moments of reuniting with his strong arms and hearty laugh. My daydreams always ended abruptly; I knew I would never have a dad. As a coping mechanism, I used to think that he was dead. That made it easier.
I've never been angry at my mother -- all my life she has been my hero, my everything. She sacrificed so much as a single mother, living on food stamps, trying to make ends meet. I know that many people considered her a pioneer, a trailblazer for a new offshoot of the women's movement. She explained to me when I was quite young why it was that I didn't have a "dad," just a "biological father." I used to love to repeat that word -- biological -- because it made me feel smart, even though I didn't understand its implications.
Then when I was 9, the mother of one of my classmates ran for political office. I remember seeing a television ad for her, and her family appeared at the end -- the complete nuclear household in the back yard, the kids playing on a swing suspended from a tree and eating their father's barbeque. I looked back at my lonely, tired mother, who sat there with a weak smile on her face.
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In the middle of the fifth grade, I met a new friend, and we had a lot in common: We both had single mothers. Her mother had suffered through two divorces. My friend didn't have much to say about her dad, mainly because she knew so little about him. But at least she got to visit him and his new family. And I was jealous. Later, in the eighth grade, another friend's father had an affair and her parents divorced. She was in so much pain, and I tried to empathize for the loss of her dad. But I was jealous of her, too, for all the attention she was getting. No one had ever offered me support or sympathy like that.
Around this time, my mother and I moved in with a friend and -- along with several other teenagers, one infant and some other adults -- lived with her for nearly a year. I went through a teenage anger stage; I would stay in my room, listening to Avril Lavigne and to Eminem's lyrics of broken homes and broken people. I felt broken, too. All the other teenagers in the house had problems with their dads. I would sit with them through tears during various rough times, and then I'd go back to my room and listen to some more Eminem. I was angry, too, and angry that I had nowhere to direct my anger.
When my mother eventually got married, I didn't get along with her husband. For so long, it had been just the two of us, my mom and I, and now I felt like the odd girl out. When she and I quarreled, this new man in our lives took to interjecting his opinion, and I didn't like that. One day, I lost my composure and screamed that he had no authority over me, that he wasn't my father -- because I didn't have one.
That was when the emptiness came over me. I realized that I am, in a sense, a freak. I really, truly would never have a dad. I finally understood what it meant to be donor-conceived, and I hated it.
It might have gone on this way indefinitely, but about a year ago I happened to see a television show about a woman who had died of a heart attack. A genetic disease had caused her heart to deteriorate, but she didn't know about her predisposition because she had been adopted as a baby and didn't know her biological families' medical histories. It hit me that I didn't know mine, either. Or half of it, at least.
So I began to research Fairfax Cryobank, the Northern Virginia sperm bank where my mother had been inseminated. I knew that sperm donors are screened and tested thoroughly, but I was still concerned. The bank had been established in 1986, a mere two years before my conception. Many maladies have come to light since then.
I e-mailed the bank five times over the course of a year, requesting medical information about my donor, but no one responded. Then one Friday last spring, I started surfing the Web. Eventually I came upon an archive of "Oprah" shows. One was a show about artificial insemination using anonymous donors. A girl perched on Oprah's couch. Next to her sat her "donor," the man who was her biological father.
I froze. Why hadn't I thought of that? If I wanted medical information and a sense of roots, who better to seek out than the man responsible for them?
I set out to find my own donor. From the limited information my mother had been given -- his blood type, race, ethnicity, eye and hair color and hair texture; his height, weight and body build; his years of college and course of study -- I concluded that he had probably graduated from a four-year university in Northern Virginia or the District within a span of three years. Now all I had to do was search through the records and yearbooks of all the possible universities and make some awkward phone calls. I figured if I worked intensely enough, my search would take a minimum of 10 years. But I was ready and willing
ฉันจริง ๆ ไม่ได้คาดหวังอะไรวัน ก่อนปีนี้ เมื่อฉันส่งอีเมล์ไปเป็นคนที่มีชื่อที่ได้พบบนอินเทอร์เน็ต ฉันถูกมองหาพ่อ และวิธีบาง คนนี้เหมาะสมกับรายการ แต่ฉันไม่เคยคิดว่า ฉันจะกดชำระสิ่งสกปรกบนทดลองทำครั้งแรก แล้ว ผมมีคำตอบ - มีรูปภาพที่แนบจากหน้าจอคอมพิวเตอร์ ใบหน้าของตัวเองดูเหมือนจะ มองที่ฉัน และเพียงเช่นนั้น หลังจาก 17 ปี ชิ้นส่วนขาดหายไปของปริศนาจัดชิดเข้าที่ปริศนาที่ผมผม 18 และสำหรับส่วนใหญ่ของชีวิต ฉันยังไม่รู้จักต้นกำเนิดของฉันครึ่งหนึ่ง ไม่ทราบที่จมูกหรือขากรรไกรของฉันมาจาก หรือฉันสนใจในวัฒนธรรมต่างชาติ แน่นอนผมฟันและเอาใจใส่ของฉันสำหรับเรื่องตลก corny จากแม่ พร้อมกับมุมมองของฉัน feminist แต่ส่วนอื่น ๆ ทั้งหมดของฉันลึกลับที่ส่วนหนึ่งมาจากพ่อ สิ่งเดียวคือ ฉันก็ไม่เคยเจอ ไม่เคยได้ยินเรื่องราวต่าง ๆ เกี่ยวกับพระองค์ ไม่เคยเห็นรูปของเขา ผมไม่ทราบชื่อของเขา แม่ไม่เคยพูดเกี่ยวกับเธอเนื่องจากเธอไม่มีเงื่อนงำที่เขาad_iconเมื่อเธอ 32 แม่ - เดี่ยว และกังวลว่า เธออาจไม่เคยแต่งงาน และมีครอบครัว - อนุญาตแพทย์สวมถุงมือยางเพื่อฉีดเข็มของอสุจิจากคนไม่รู้จักเข้าไปในมดลูกของเธอเพื่อให้เธอไม่สามารถมีลูก ฉันผล: เด็กผู้บริจาครู้สึกและในขณะ ผมสวยโกรธเลยผมโกรธคิดว่า เกี่ยวข้อง คิดบริจาคทุกคนเน้น "ผู้ปกครอง" - ผู้ใหญ่ที่สามารถทำการเลือกเกี่ยวกับชีวิตของตนเองที่ ผู้รับจะเห็นใจในการอยากมีบุตร ผู้บริจาคได้รับการรับประกันของไม่เปิดเผยชื่อและ absolution จากลูกหลานของเขา "บริจาค" รับผิดชอบ ตราบใดที่ผู้ใหญ่เหล่านี้มีความสุข แล้วผู้บริจาคความคิดคือ ความสำเร็จ ขวาไม่ใช่ ลูกที่เกิดมาของธุรกรรมเหล่านี้มีคน มากเกินไป พวกเราในการสร้างเอกสารแรกของทารกผู้บริจาค - รู้สึกในปลายทศวรรษ 1980 และช่วงต้น ' 90s เมื่อธนาคารสเปิร์มเป็นทั่วไป และผู้บริจาคผสมเทียมเริ่มงอกงาม - มีมาอายุ และเรามีสิ่งที่พูดฉันอยู่ที่นี่จะบอกว่า อารมณ์ จำนวนมากของเราจะไม่รักษาขึ้น เราไม่ขอเกิดในสถานการณ์นี้ มีข้อจำกัดและความสับสน หลอกผู้ปกครองและผู้เชี่ยวชาญทางการแพทย์ถือว่า รากชีวภาพไม่เรื่อง "ผลิตภัณฑ์" ของ cryobanks บริการ เมื่อปรารถนาสำหรับความสัมพันธ์ทางชีวภาพคือ อะไรทำให้ลูกค้าธนาคารแรกได้เราลูกหลานได้จดจำด้านขวาที่ปล้นจากเราที่เกิด - สิทธิที่จะรู้ว่าพ่อแม่ของเราทั้งสองที่และเราพร้อมที่จะเรียกคืนได้ โตขึ้น มันไม่ได้สำคัญว่า ไม่มีพ่อ - หรือน้อยคืออะไรฉันบอกตัวเอง แค่บางครั้ง เมื่อผมขนาดเล็ก ฉันจะ daydream เกี่ยวกับคนสูง lean รับฉัน และควงฉันรอบในลานด้านหน้า ชายแมนละลายที่สัมผัสจากสาวน้อยของเขา ฉันจะไม่ได้ดีถ้าเขาไม่รอบตลอดเวลา ตราบใดที่อาจมีช่วงเวลาหวานของ reuniting ของเขาดินและหัวเราะที่แสนอร่อย Daydreams ฉันจะสิ้นสุดทันที ฉันรู้ว่า ฉันจะไม่มีพ่อเป็น เป็นกลไกรับมือ เคยคิดว่า เขาตาย ที่ทำให้มันง่ายขึ้นเราไม่ได้โกรธที่แม่ - ชีวิตของฉันเธอแล้วฮีโร่ของฉัน ของฉันทุกอย่าง เธอเสียสละเท่านั้นที่เป็นแม่คนเดียว อยู่บนแสตมป์อาหาร พยายามที่จะทำให้สิ้นสุดการตอบสนอง ทราบว่า หลายคนถือว่าเธอเป็นผู้บุกเบิก trailblazer สำหรับ offshoot ใหม่ของการเคลื่อนไหวของผู้หญิง เธออธิบายกับฉันตั้งแต่ค่อนข้างหนุ่มทำไมก็ฉันไม่ได้เป็น "พ่อ เพียง"ชีวภาพพ่อ" เคยรักซ้ำคำนั้น -ชีวภาพ - เพราะมันทำให้ฉันรู้สึกสมาร์ท แม้ว่าฉันไม่เข้าใจผลกระทบของแล้ว เมื่อ 9 แม่ของเพื่อนร่วมชั้นของฉันวิ่งในทางการเมือง ผมจำได้ว่า เห็นโฆษณาโทรทัศน์สำหรับเธอ และครอบครัวของเธอปรากฏในตอนท้าย - ครัวเรือนนิวเคลียร์สมบูรณ์หลังบ้าน เด็กเล่นชิงช้าถูกระงับจากต้นไม้ และกินบาร์บีคิวของพ่อ ผมมองไปที่แม่ของฉันเหงา เหนื่อย ที่นั่งดีอ่อนบนใบหน้าของเธอad_iconIn the middle of the fifth grade, I met a new friend, and we had a lot in common: We both had single mothers. Her mother had suffered through two divorces. My friend didn't have much to say about her dad, mainly because she knew so little about him. But at least she got to visit him and his new family. And I was jealous. Later, in the eighth grade, another friend's father had an affair and her parents divorced. She was in so much pain, and I tried to empathize for the loss of her dad. But I was jealous of her, too, for all the attention she was getting. No one had ever offered me support or sympathy like that.Around this time, my mother and I moved in with a friend and -- along with several other teenagers, one infant and some other adults -- lived with her for nearly a year. I went through a teenage anger stage; I would stay in my room, listening to Avril Lavigne and to Eminem's lyrics of broken homes and broken people. I felt broken, too. All the other teenagers in the house had problems with their dads. I would sit with them through tears during various rough times, and then I'd go back to my room and listen to some more Eminem. I was angry, too, and angry that I had nowhere to direct my anger.When my mother eventually got married, I didn't get along with her husband. For so long, it had been just the two of us, my mom and I, and now I felt like the odd girl out. When she and I quarreled, this new man in our lives took to interjecting his opinion, and I didn't like that. One day, I lost my composure and screamed that he had no authority over me, that he wasn't my father -- because I didn't have one.That was when the emptiness came over me. I realized that I am, in a sense, a freak. I really, truly would never have a dad. I finally understood what it meant to be donor-conceived, and I hated it.It might have gone on this way indefinitely, but about a year ago I happened to see a television show about a woman who had died of a heart attack. A genetic disease had caused her heart to deteriorate, but she didn't know about her predisposition because she had been adopted as a baby and didn't know her biological families' medical histories. It hit me that I didn't know mine, either. Or half of it, at least.So I began to research Fairfax Cryobank, the Northern Virginia sperm bank where my mother had been inseminated. I knew that sperm donors are screened and tested thoroughly, but I was still concerned. The bank had been established in 1986, a mere two years before my conception. Many maladies have come to light since then.I e-mailed the bank five times over the course of a year, requesting medical information about my donor, but no one responded. Then one Friday last spring, I started surfing the Web. Eventually I came upon an archive of "Oprah" shows. One was a show about artificial insemination using anonymous donors. A girl perched on Oprah's couch. Next to her sat her "donor," the man who was her biological father.I froze. Why hadn't I thought of that? If I wanted medical information and a sense of roots, who better to seek out than the man responsible for them?I set out to find my own donor. From the limited information my mother had been given -- his blood type, race, ethnicity, eye and hair color and hair texture; his height, weight and body build; his years of college and course of study -- I concluded that he had probably graduated from a four-year university in Northern Virginia or the District within a span of three years. Now all I had to do was search through the records and yearbooks of all the possible universities and make some awkward phone calls. I figured if I worked intensely enough, my search would take a minimum of 10 years. But I was ready and willing
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