Things That Have Happened in the Last Year

I didn't realize it had been nearly a year since my last post.  Between then and now I've met my paternal half-brother Hans and his wife and young son.  I rejoined Facebook after a 2+ year hiatus, reconnecting me with my paternal half-sister Simone, the paternal first cousin once removed who orchestrated the Von Trapp family reunion, and my various maternal relations who I only ever communicate with on there.  Apparently no one was avoiding me; they just don't bother replying to emails.

No new half-siblings, leaving the donor conceived sibling count at zero.  No new word from my adoptive brother Dante or any other family.  I haven't heard from Dante since 2017 after I wired him our dad's life insurance payout.  I thought he might've friended our cousins on Facebook since he'd said when Dad died that he wanted to get back in touch with them, but the only thing I can see that he he has done on Facebook since then is join a group from our hometown, get into some internet fights with locals, get banned from the group, and then post that he has no idea why he was banned and they're all just too cliquey.  Now that's the Dante I remember.

No new word from my biological father.  No direct communication since he asked me not to contact him again after receiving my letter in 2014.

I can't remember if I wrote about discovering on Newspapers.com that my dad's father had another family and a well documented criminal record (thank you, Fresno Bee) before he moved back to the Midwest and married Grandma.  And thus my dad had a secret half-brother he may or may not have known about.  I emailed Dante about it but got no response.  The half-brother died a few years before my dad did and had no known biological children.  He had been named after my grandpa, but his stepfather had adopted him when he was little and given him a new surname.  I'd like to ask my dad's brother and sister if they knew about the secret half-brother, but I haven't seen my uncle since Dad's funeral or my aunt since my wedding over a decade ago.  I could probably count on my hands the number of times I've talked to them in my life, so reaching out for this would be more awkward than I'm willing to do.

My mom's suspected half-sister's daughter took a DNA test, confirming my grandpa was, in fact, her grandfather too.  I thought I'd written about my mom's secret half-sister/cousin, but I can't find it anywhere but here.  My cousin Michelle and I had started to doubt the veracity of the claim that Grandpa had fathered Ruby shortly before Ruby's mother had married his half-brother.  It was the big family "secret" all the cousins knew.  Ruby's daughter showed up as a first cousin match for me on 23andMe though, which is way too close a match for us to be half-second cousins (we share more than triple the DNA I share with my known half-second cousins on AncestryDNA -- the ones who should be her first cousins but aren't), so I know for sure now that we're actually half-first cousins.  We chatted on 23andMe a bit.  She asked after my (our) remaining uncle, Eugene, who neither of us has heard from in years.  I assume she knows as well as any of us who her grandfather is, but since I'd never talked to her or her mother (my half-aunt) before in my life and I don't know how their branch of the family feels about any of this, we never got onto the topic of biological grandfathers.  I wish I knew a polite and inoffensive way to say, "I've seen some wonky shit on here and I'm comfortable talking about anything you want to talk about.  You won't upend my world; I just don't want to upend yours either."

Tips for Keeping Your Sperm Donations Secret

Step 1:  STOP DOING IT!  FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, YOU'RE GOING TO GET CAUGHT!

A few months ago I crossed paths on Facebook with one of the many, many men who advertise online to donate their sperm to strangers.  He said he was married and had a daughter.  He said his wife knew he donates sperm and is okay with it but wants him to keep it discreet.  He used a very common fake name, as well as photographs of other people instead of his own.  He used a fake birthday, fake age, and fake place of employment.  He seemed to use his sperm donor user names exclusively on sperm donor websites.  This guy knew what he was doing.

He posted on a lot of sperm donor websites though, and little bits of information started to come out.  For one thing, he uses photos of himself with his daughter on some of the sites.  There are several photos – too many of them both to be stock photos -- and it seems like the people who had actually met him for sperm might say something if they weren’t him.  Reverse Google image search unfortunately yielded nothing. 

On another site he listed an actual small town name for his location instead of the local metropolitan area like he had on all the others.  Someone who had availed him of his services for “natural insemination” (sexual intercourse) gave him a glowing online review that called him by a different and presumably real first name.  Other ladies told him happy birthday on Facebook when his account said it was still months away. 

That’s still not a lot of information for a person to go on.  But apparently it’s enough for Google.  I had been entering everything I knew about him – first name, date of birth, town, user names – and it finally yielded the MyLife listing for someone with his first name, date of birth, and small town.  Maybe he used his sperm donor user names or email alongside his actual name too; I’m not sure.  I looked up the full name MyLife listed and suddenly I was looking at the man from the photos with his daughter.  Suddenly I was looking at his wedding announcement, his wife’s Facebook page, his Pinterest, his LinkedIn, his father’s YouTube page.  He had deleted most of his social media accounts that weren’t about donating sperm under fake names, but it didn’t matter.

I wonder if his wife really knows about his donations.  And if so, I wonder how she feels about it.  I wonder if his 5-year-old daughter knows about her half-siblings yet.  She already has seven according to the sperm donor profile with her sweet little girl face all over it. 

I Found My Secret Half-Great-Aunt with DNA Testing

I mentioned in a post two years ago that my maternal grandfather was conceived out of wedlock.  His mother was between husbands, and his father got around.  I also mentioned that a much younger half-sibling had contacted my grandfather in the late '90s, but I never learned her name.  She lived far away, and my grandmother had said she would send her a copy of the only photo they had of my great-grandfather and the few she had of his other children, the legitimate offspring.  My half-great-aunt didn't know her father because she had been conceived during an extramarital affair.  Her mother and social father (stepfather doesn't seem accurate if they passed her off as his own) already had two other children.  My half-great-aunt would be about 70 now, barely older than my mother.  Well, I found her.  Or, more accurately, DNA testing found us both.

My half-great-aunt popped up on AncestryDNA the other day with just three people on her family tree -- herself and her biological parents -- and I immediately knew who she was.  Even without the family tree, the 450+ cM of shared DNA and the many DNA relatives in common made it clear that my great-grandfather was our closest common ancestor.  I messaged her explaining how we're related (cushioned with "I think") and that my grandfather was one of the children born after their father's wife died.  I was trying to put delicately that he was one of the outsiders like her, that almost everything I knew had come much later from my own research.  I wanted her to feel comfortable talking to me.  I wanted her to know I was an outsider too, albeit one with lots of collected data and photographs.

I asked if she'd been the half-sister whose named I'd never learned who had written to my grandfather in the '90s.  She wrote back right away, and she was welcoming.  She said she was probably the same sister.  The few details my grandmother had mentioned, like birth year and state of residence, matched up, and she said she had tried to reach out to her "father's people" back then.  She hadn't known her father, she said.  She'd only seen him once when she was little, and her mother was still married to someone else, so she hadn't been allowed to talk about him at all.  How strangely similar to being donor conceived.

Meeting My Sister for the First Time

I'm hesitant to write about this because, as largely unread as this blog is, it's not private.  My nearest and dearest are well aware of it, though they aren't interested enough to come here (they hear enough of this stuff in person), and I should assume any up-and-coming nearest and dearest will be clued into it too, which is why I don't talk much about my paternal half-siblings.  I want them to like me, even if they someday read my blog.

To recap, I was conceived with anonymous donor sperm.  The only half-siblings I've found so far are the two adult children my biological father raised with his wife.  I'm the only DC one I know of, though there are probably more.

When I found Joseph, my biological father, he seemed very concerned that I would out him publicly, tag his children in Facebook posts, or somehow stalk or inconvenience his family.  I forgive him for this because he doesn't know that's not my style (except for the stalking -- I'm an exceptionally quiet cyberstalker).  He didn't want to know me, but my half-siblings did.  I have spoken to my half-sister Simone once on the phone.  We text sometimes on holidays.  We're Facebook friends, as I am with my half-brother Hans.  It's a strange relationship.  I've always been afraid of being perceived as too forward or forcing myself on them.  Both have been welcoming and kind to me.  Neither have seemed particularly interested in me though, so I've tried to take their lead.  Our relationships cooled, which I think was actually a good thing because they feel more solid now.  I feel more vested.  I feel like I would have to make a misstep for them to strike me from their lives now, whereas I previously checked Facebook every day to see if they had spontaneously unfriended me yet.

Here's the point of this post.  Simone wants to visit me and stay in my house.  Right away.  I do not want this to happen.  I would like to meet her.  I would like to share a meal and talk for hours, maybe even spend the day together.  She is my sister, and she will be forever, no matter how this relationship plays out.  But we have never met in person, we've only spoken once, and I don't want to host her in my home.  I am self-conscious of my home, and I have a husband and child and dog to take care of in my home.  I want to be able to give Simone my undivided attention somewhere else.  I want to be able to decompress after we meet and be alone to process everything.  I declined her request.  I said maybe in a few months.  Want to set a date in a few months?  Maybe then I'd have time to get to know her enough I could handle it, though I didn't say that part.  She asked again.  It needed to be now.  To avoid saying no again -- but also avoid saying yes -- I asked what was going on and expressed concern.  I knew she had had a fight with her boyfriend.  I knew to a certain extent what this was all about because she posts a lot of information on Facebook, which I appreciate as a quiet cyberstalker.  We messaged back a forth and few times over the next couple of weeks.  Then she asked again if she could stay in my house.  I've gotten good at drawing boundaries over the years, but I never learned how to maintain a relationship with someone who might not want those boundaries in place.  At the advice of my best friend Jerry, who is good at complex interpersonal relationships, I did what Simone frequently does and didn't respond at all.  The next time we talk, I will -- like Simone frequently does -- pretend it never happened.  This might sound cold, but I think it's the kindest way I could handle this particular situation.  It's strange.  I feel like I'm relearning how to play a game I was never particularly good at.

In case you're reading this ever, Simone, I do want to know you.  You are interesting, and we have so much in common in spite of all the ways we're different.  I think we'd both enjoy taking absurd numbers of selfies together and posting them on social media for attention with various #sister tags.  I like you and want to know you better.  But I want to take things slow.  I know it's been over two years, but we've barely spoken in that time, let alone bonded.  I am afraid of being the rebound from your current relationship.  I am afraid the novelty of meeting a new sister and posting selfies together on Facebook will not be enough to make you feel better again and that you might end up upset or mad at me.  I can be a good friend, but we barely know each other, and I'm not the best person for this job.  We could talk over the phone, and I could listen and sympathize, but I'm not good at hosting guests.  I don't like doing it, and that's not about you.  I want to get to know you, but if I let you light a fire under this sister relationship, I am afraid it will explode.  You mentioned starting DBT once on Facebook.  I clicked "like."  It made me happy that you were getting the kind of therapy I had always thought would work best for you.  I wanted to express support in that small Facebook way.  You don't know that borderline personality disorder is one of my areas of expertise.  You don't know anything about the family that raised me (well, you might now, if you're reading this here).  I want to have a functional relationship with you, so I'm not letting this go too fast.  Maybe I could come visit you and stay in a hotel.  We could go out to eat and you could show me around.  This is the best I can do.

My Piece on the AnonymousUs Podcast

I wrote a piece about my sister a couple of weeks ago for AnonymousUs.org (and posted it here too because I crave attention and recognition), and Hattie Hart did a very nice reading of it for their podcast this week.  Mine is the last of the three stories, starting at the 5:45 point.  (Thank you, Hattie!)

My Sister

My half-sister Simone texted me over the weekend and it got me thinking.  I wrote the following to submit to AnonymousUs:


When I first found my biological father and his family through DNA testing, I found my only known half-sister.  Our father told her about me at my request.  She was in shock.  "I always wanted a sister," she told me.  "I can't believe I've had one all this time and didn't even know."  I knew how she felt.  We'd both grown up with only brothers.      

My sister and I look a lot alike:  same pale skin, same hair, same eyes, same jaw.  We like a lot of the same things:  hiking, baking, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  We're both half German, though only she grew up learning the language, and only she feels a connection to the culture.  And there are even more things we don't have in common -- the way we dress, the books we read, the music we like.

We've never met.  I was in kindergarten when my sister was born and moved a thousand miles away.  It was another 25 years before we learned of each other's existence.  We've texted, Facebooked, talked on the phone -- tentative efforts to become "real sisters" like ones who've grown up together.  Her parents don't approve, but we're adults and it's out of their hands now.  My mother forbade me from ever seeking out my biological father's family too.  "He was just 'a donor,'" she told me.  "It's different."  Still, even if you believe family is only who you choose to include, my siblings and I have chosen to include one another.  As far as they're concerned, I count.  I feel like their opinions on this matter hold more weight than mine since they aren't donor conceived like me. 

Families aren't exclusively made up of intended parents and the children they choose to raise.  That's a family, sure, but sometimes children -- certainly donor conceived and adopted children -- have additional family beyond the ones who raised them.  Sometimes family means shared blood in two people who look alike but grew up apart.  Sometimes two strangers are family simply because they are sisters.  I don't think it's as "different" as my mother believed.

Genetic Counseling for the Donor Conceived

I'm getting to the point where I'm posting enough stuff my half-siblings know that, if they stumbled across this blog for whatever reason, they would be able to identify me.  This makes me nervous, but not nervous enough to stop posting.  Obviously.

My half-brother Hans emailed me the other day to say our uncle had tested positive for some sort of mutation that puts people at higher risk for specific types of cancer.  He said our father had asked him to let me know in case I wanted to get myself or my daughter tested.  Below Hans' note was a series of emails between my biological father and my uncle's wife.  She had the job of informing my uncle's family members that they might want to get tested.  There was a limited amount of information exchanged.  The emails were from several months ago, but the dates showed my biological father just had forwarded them to Hans to forward to me this week.  It reminded me vaguely of how people who find out they have an STD are supposed to reach out to everyone they've been intimate with.  "Hey, it's Joseph.  Yeah, the Joseph who sired you about 30 years ago.  Good times, huh?  So anyway, I tested positive, and it turns out you might want to get yourself tested too..."  I wish I had more known half-siblings, just to add to the comic effect.

I had a check up scheduled with my doctor for just a few days later, so I brought a print-out of the email chain to my appointment and asked my doctor what he thought of genetic testing.  I'd assumed he would say there wasn't much point in it if I'm not planning to have more kids and there is nothing actionable I can do with the results anyway.  When I'd brought up prenatal testing before conceiving my daughter, my OB/GYN at the time had said, "What for?  If you don't even know your family medical history, how can we know what tests to run?"  I hadn't known who my biological father was back then or anything about his family medical history, but I thought there were standard tests doctors could run for common disorders. 

To my surprise, maybe because I have more family information now, my current doctor had a different reaction.  He referred me to a local cancer center that does genetic counseling and strongly recommended I do it.  He said that, while there isn't often something actionable to be done with a heightened cancer risk, there might be more screening options in the future, and the field of genetics is progressing constantly so it would be good to have my results on file.

I called the genetic counselor to make an appointment.  She asked me if I had a copy of my uncle's report because there was relevant information in it that they could use in testing me.  I told her I might be able to get a copy.  She stressed the importance of it until I finally explained that my biological father was an anonymous sperm donor and I'm still a secret to most of his family, said uncle probably included.  I told her I would ask my brother for the report, but I wasn't sure I could get it.  She told me it was okay.  While it's useful information and would inform what genetic tests would be done on me and would probably make my testing cheaper, they can work without it. 

Then she asked me to compile a list of every  member of my extended family who has had cancer too, as well as which type of cancer and at what age it developed.  I know some of that.  I know what I know anyway.  I don't know when their various cancers developed, but I know they all died soon thereafter or as a result of the cancer, and I know when they died, so surely that counts for something.  My information isn't lacking enough that I would try to ask for more anyway.  Most of the cancer in my family is on my father's side.  All of the "lady cancers" are, and those are the ones whose risk are heightened the most dramatically by this particular gene mutation.

I told my brother thank you for the information and thank you when he got me the extra pages from our uncle's report.  He's always very prompt in his replies.  I didn't mention that I already have heightened risk for colon cancer, which I inherited from our father's genes, in spite of our father pointing out in the email chain that he thinks he got "the good genes" because he hasn't yet had the same colon issues his brother or mother have had.  I'm not going to tell any of them the results of my genetics testing either, both because I don't think they want to know and also because I want to have information they don't have for a change.  I'm not mad at my half-siblings.  They are nice and kind to me, but I'm angry at my father every time I remember he exists, not just for this.  I get so angry when I think of him that I often cry in impotent rage, and I don't want anyone in his family to know that.  I want them to think I'm calmer and cooler than them, as I've always pretended to be.  I do not want them thinking I'm irrational and ungrateful or expecting too much.  I will take what I can get.  I will take months' old forwarded emails indicating that my daughter and I might want to get ourselves checked out for new and exotic cancer risks, carefully funneled through a third party so that I don't dare take liberties with my father by responding to him directly.  I know I have more than most DC people already.  But I'm still angry.  

Bright Side:  At least it's not ALS.  I scoured my raw genome data from 23andMe, and I'm definitely not getting ALS.

Talking with My Donor Sister

My half-sister and I have arranged a time to talk on the phone for the first time ever.  We've kept each other at arms' length for the last year, though it sounds like that wasn't really what either of us wanted.  I'm nervous.  What if she doesn't like me?  What if she has expectations and I don't meet them?  What if she asks me about my parents?  I'm glad we're doing this though.  We'll never be sisters in anything more than a technicality if we don't get to know each other at least a little, and we've both always wanted a sister.

I'm trying not to have expectations.  I'm trying to remember that a sane person -- any person who I should continue to maintain a relationship with -- will not make a snap judgment about me over our first conversation and decide she hates me.  I'm trying to think of things to say and questions to ask her.  So much seems too personal.  Scheduling our phone date made me so nervous that I forgot for a little while that she grew up with my biological father as her dad.  That'll be kind of a weird topic.  Is it creepy to ask about him?  Or is it expected?  I don't know.

I don't expect to have a preternaturally close bond with my half-sister.  We look a lot alike, but we don't share THAT much DNA, and we share zero history.  I just hope if I push through the awkward feelings that we can reach a point where we enjoy talking to each other.

Wish me luck.

Inside My Father's House

I just saw the inside of my biological father's house for the first time.  I'm not there.  I have never been inside it.  But my half-brother has started posting Christmas photos on Facebook tagged with the town where his parents live.  The only time I've ever heard of that town was when I found my biological father.

Here is what I can tell so far:  I don't like the floor tiles, and the walls are off-white.  I think it was the kitchen I saw, but I'm not 100% certain.  I would call the style "suburban affluence."  It looks like colors and styles picked out by a contractor -- bland and inoffensive.  They also have one of those tiny refrigerators for wine, and it looks well stocked, as does the adjacent wine rack. 

That's it.  That's what I know about my biological father's house (aside from things I'd already found on Zillow, such as the purchase price and an aerial view of the land, neither of which really tells me anything about him).  Still I found myself shaking as soon as I saw the location tag on Hans' photos.  Isn't that stupid?  I felt like I was seeing something I wasn't supposed to see, like I'd hacked into it when all I'd been doing is scrolling through my newsfeed.  It's unnerving whenever one of my half-siblings posts something about their parents, I guess because I know they know who I am and that they want nothing to do with me and I assume they'd find it unnerving to know I'm reading about them.  I'm half-hoping and half-dreading Hans posts a picture of our father over Christmas just so I can see what he looks like now.  A video upload of him would be holy grail material as far as I'm concerned, one of the few things I hope to see before I die.  I'm still not sure I'd be able to pick him out of a line-up based on the photos I've seen, and I've always wished I could hear his voice once and see him in motion.  He looks nothing like me in the post-high school photos I've seen.  Maybe we move alike or something.  Maybe we smile the same.  He never seems to smile in photos.

While I'd never want to go back to not knowing who my biological father is or unknow the fact that I'm donor conceived, sometimes I wish I could flip a switch and forget these facts exist.  I wish I could forget the parents who raised me too, for that matter.  Not forever, and I would never want to go back to the wondering because the wondering is crazy making, but I wish I could stop thinking and caring about them all.  It's a waste of energy when I ought to be doing other things, and it makes me feel so sad.  I ought to be frosting a cake right now and washing the dishes.

My Adopted Brother

Dante's adoption anniversary is the anniversary of the day our parents -- my mother and social father -- finalized his adoption in court.  He was two months old and had lived with our parents since he was strong enough to leave the hospital.   

Every year we celebrated Dante's anniversary by going out with our mother's extended family -- our grandparents, aunts, uncles, and many cousins -- first out for lunch at Pizza Hut and then to a movie or the bowling alley and ice skating rink.  I loved spending the day with my cousins, almost all of whom were local and spent every major holiday with us, including nearly a dozen family birthday parties throughout the year.  But I was jealous that Dante had an anniversary and I didn't.  It was almost like getting a second birthday party every year, even if there weren't presents.  I was jealous of Dante a lot, any time he got something I didn't, any time I felt things weren't equal.  I think that's a pretty typical kid reaction to perceived unfairness.

When my mother told me I was donor conceived and immediately told me I could never tell another soul, including my dad or Dante, it cast Dante's adoption anniversary in a weird light for me.  Why was his adoption, or the fact that our parents weren't biologically related to him, deserving of a party, while what I saw as a similar facet of my own identity -- being biologically descended from a secret parent outside our family -- was a dark secret?  It didn't seem fair at all.

In hindsight, I think my mother was just doing what had she had been told to do (except for the telling me I am donor conceived part).  Tell adopted children where they came from (to the extent that you know).  Celebrate them.  Tell them they are "special" and "chosen."  That was where adoption had gotten to when Dante was born.  Never tell children they are donor conceived.  Never tell anyone where the donor conceived children came from.  If anyone knows the truth, the intended father will reject the child and the child won't respect him as its parent.  That was where donor conception had gotten to when I was born.  "For god's sake, tell your child," has been the prevailing wisdom since the '90s, but when I was conceived, secrecy was king.  Adoptions used to be dark secrets too, so it seems to me the prevailing wisdom of "what to tell the children" is a couple decades behind for donor conception simply because it's a newer phenomenon. 

It seemed bizarre to me to treat us so differently when the goal was apparently to treat us both "as their own children."  But the prevailing wisdom of the day was dramatically different for our individual circumstances, no matter how similar those circumstances appeared in my mind.  Secret parents.  God knows how many siblings.  Falsified birth certificates.  The wondering.  The perpetual unknown.  His unknown was twice as big as mine, but my secret was darker.  It seemed we had a lot in common, but I wasn't allowed to tell him so.

I'm not jealous of Dante anymore, or of the fact that he got an extra annual party.  I'm not even sure he liked those parties.  He never talked to me or our parents about being adopted or how he felt about it.  It might have meant nothing to him or he might have been broken up inside.  There was no way to know because we weren't close.  We weren't close, and our house wasn't a safe place to talk about such things.  Had he dared to bring up the topic of his birth parents, even if it was just to express a curiosity in who they were, I can only imagine how our mother would have retaliated.

I can only remember my mother bringing up the topic of Dante's birth parents in my presence two times.  I remember her telling Dante that his mother had been 15 and was impregnated by a man whose children she had been babysitting.  I don't know if any of this was true, nor if it was "consensual," to the extent that sex with a 15-year-old can be consensual.  It struck me as a way for my mother to tell Dante that she was better than his birth parents.  Period.  The "slut" insinuation was there.  I'd like to say I imagined it, but as far as I could tell, my mother tended to view any sexually active woman as a slut who "had it coming," even if she was a child or married.  The only other time I remember my mother mentioning Dante's birth parents was once when he wanted money for something in his teens or early twenties.  She'd sneered at him, "Why don't you go find your REAL parents?  Maybe they'll have some money for you."  It had the desired effect of shutting him up.

I remember once prattling away in the living room as a child and accidentally saying "my mom" instead of just "Mom."  Dante and our parents were the only people to whom I called her "Mom" instead of "my mom," so it seemed like a natural slip up to me, but my mother cut me off and laid into me.  "How dare you?" she screamed.  "I'm as much his mother as I am yours!"  I'd never thought she wasn't.  She'd favored Dante for most of my life.  When he hadn't recently done something to prompt her to turn on him viciously, he was the one she chose for her team while I was left out in the cold with our dad.  I knew how things worked at our house.  I hadn't been trying to insinuate that the only brother I'd ever known wasn't a part of our awful family.  He'd been a part of it for longer than I had.  Still she blanketed me in shame.  It feels strange to feel so sure I had made an innocent slip of the tongue with no deeper meaning behind it and to also feel so deeply ashamed for it.  Maybe that's what good parents are supposed to do though -- defend their children against the perceived slights of others.  It was confusing whenever I became one of those "others."

I wish Dante had known I was donor conceived.  I don't believe it's harder than being adopted (or even as hard most of the time, depending on the family and the surrounding circumstances -- half the unknown = half the trouble?), but it's another way of being different, of being "other."  It's something we sort of had in common.  We don't relate to each other at all, and yet I imagine he must've felt like as much of an outsider in that house as I did.  I felt like an outsider years before I knew I was donor conceived.  I remember being in preschool and thinking I must've been secretly adopted.  I thought I had both a mom and a dad out there in the world somewhere -- people who would understand me and make everything make sense.

I wish Dante knew that I wasn't as favored or as belonging as he seemed to think I was.  As jealous as I was of him (sometimes childishly, sometimes with good reason), I could see that he was treated unfairly, especially by our dad.  And that, as often as our mother gave him an undeserved pass on his bad behavior, she sometimes said terrible things he didn't deserve either.  Did he ever see when I was treated unfairly?  Did he recognize how hard I tried to keep them happy?  Did it ever occur to him that his abuse made my life harder and scarier?  Could he care? 

I wish he knew that it wasn't always just him on the outside being mistreated like he seemed to think.  Nothing there was fair, and neither of us was the full-time golden child.  If he hadn't been a psychopath, we might have been friends.  It would have been nice to have a friend in that house.

Dante is still in that house.  I almost said "stuck in that house," but I suspect that's not how he sees it.  Every time he left -- usually because our mother had kicked him out -- he gravitated back.  When she finally moved out after the divorce, when he was in his mid-thirties, he left his apartment and independent adult life to move back into his childhood bedroom.  Why?  He brought his girlfriend and her son with him, but still, why?  Why would anyone live in that awful, dilapidated house by choice?  And now he lives there with our dad, the person who always treated him the most cruelly.  I don't envy Dante anymore.  He might be happier than me -- I honestly have no idea -- but I could never live the way he lives.  We are too different.  I have never been able to understand him. 

I don't know what effect being adopted has had on him.  No ones knows.  There isn't a "control" version of Dante who isn't adopted with whom to compare him.  I don't know how he might or might not have been different had he been raised by his birth mother, or by more functional adoptive parents for that matter.  This post isn't really about that.  I guess what I mean for it to be about is that you can't predict how someone will feel about being adopted or react to being adopted, and I don't think there is a way to undo the fact that someone is adopted simply by throwing them a party and calling them "special."  And just because you love an adopted family member like they're blood and treat them like blood and genuinely feel like they're your flesh and blood doesn't mean they don't still feel adopted (or donor conceived, as the case may be).  And that's okay.  It'll be more okay if you can let them feel it without taking it personally or trying to make them feel something else.  That's what I think anyway.  I can't speak for anyone else.

The DAR and Cultural Identity

I have craved a cultural identity since I was a young child.  I relished movies about people with strong cultural ties, such as "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" and "Pocahontas" and I really want to think of a third one that isn't "Schindler's List" but every example I think of is more culturally insensitive than the last.  I grew up in a white, Midwestern town where our grasping at cultural identity was probably a large part of what led people to genealogy.  It's what led me to mine.

My interest in the Daughters of the American Revolution began when I thought I'd never know the identity of my biological father.  My social father's mother had been very interested in her own genealogy, and I have a framed family tree she drew that includes pencil sketches of a few generations of her ancestors.  They aren't my ancestors, but no one else in her family seemed to want it, and she's a talented artist.  It seemed less weird to have it hanging on my dining room wall when I thought it was the only paternal family I'd ever know. 

I decided to trace my dad's family tree on Ancestry.com since his mother had given me a decent start.  I remembered another family tree she had drawn up that traced her American ancestors back to the 1600s.  I thought maybe I could join the DAR.  If there was going to be institutionalized lying on my birth certificate, I wanted at least to be able to use it to gain entry to a club where I didn't belong.

In case you aren't aware, the DAR is an American group for ladies over the age of 18 who can trace their direct lineage to someone who aided America in the fight for independence.  By "trace," they mean you have to produce birth, marriage, and death certificates for everyone in your direct line back to the ancestor in question.  Most states didn't keep such records until about a hundred years after the Revolutionary War, so that can be a tricky feat.  Fortunately, if a more immediate ancestor is already a member of the DAR -- such as your mother or grandmother -- you only have to prove your lineage back to that person.  Very convenient for maintaining the status quo.  DNA evidence doesn't count as proof nor is it accepted, so no one really knows how many of the members actually descended from patriots biologically and not just legally, or how many meet the bloodline criteria but are excluded because of an ancestor being adopted or born out of wedlock.

I think my dad's mom tried to join the DAR at one point.  When I found a "patriot" in her tree and looked him up in the DAR's patriot database, there was a note explicitly stating that the there was no certifiable proof that the daughter from whom my grandmother descended was legally his child.   

Now that I've done more genealogical research on my own family tree, I've found I'm descended from at least half a dozen "patriots" on my maternal grandfather's side.  While I find a club based around purity of blood rather distasteful and assigning yourself value based on who you were born to rather sad (especially in my case), the DAR still sings its siren song for me.  I crave acceptance and belonging.  Also, "I'm off to my DAR meeting," is one of the WASPiest things a person can say, and I've striven to be WASPier since adolescence.

In case you aren't aware, a WASP is a White Anglo Saxon Protestant, but it has a connotation of snobby old money and power, which is what I find appealing about the term.  I was born white, of mostly British descent, and Methodist, so I'm a WASP in the most literal sense, but I was raised as White Trash.  It's a very different subculture.  We kept a totaled car in our driveway when I was growing up.  My brother has a gun collection.  My grandpa used the "n" word at Thanksgiving dinner.  I don't get jokes about "double-wide trailers" because my uncle lived in one and it was a hell of a lot nicer than the house where I grew up, not to mention TWICE AS WIDE as his previous trailer.  It's a very different subculture.

As I drew up my family tree over the last year, it seemed my DAR dreams would be quashed by the fact that my maternal grandfather was "illegitimate."  I had no idea what name he'd had at birth because his parents weren't married, and his siblings were all half-siblings with different surnames.  Every census since his birth had listed them all under a different surname -- that of whomever their mother had most recently married, even though there was never a man in the house come census time.  I couldn't find evidence my grandfather had even existed under his father's surname before he enlisted in the army for WWII, so I didn't know how to request a copy of his birth certificate. 

Then a couple of weeks ago it occurred to me to try.  I knew his birth date and his mother's maiden name and the city where he was born.  Maybe that would be enough.  I used the only legal name under which I knew him and included his father's name for good measure.  It worked.  It turns out Wilkes -- his father's last name -- was always his last name.  And his father's name was on his birth certificate too.  Where my grandfather and I come from (and maybe across America -- I'm not sure), the mother's husband is automatically the legal father, whether he is present for the birth or not.  If the mother is unmarried and no father is present to sign his name to the birth certificate, the father line unceremoniously reads "bastard."  I'm not sure if this is still how things are done, but it's how they were done when my grandpa was born in the 1920s.

My grandpa's father wasn't present for his birth.  I know this because the line of the birth certificate where it asks for his last known address reads, "Unknown -- Abandoned Wife."  Perhaps it's true.  Perhaps they were married, in spite of the fact that there is no marriage license registered for them in the county where they both lived or anywhere else I have looked and in spite of the fact that my grandmother's letters made it sound like they weren't.  (Or perhaps Michael is right and "Abandoned Wife" was the name of his hometown in Kentucky.)  But I think it's equally likely my great-grandmother didn't want to have "bastard" written on her son's birth certificate.  And I think that was a solid move on her part.  I have great respect for people willing to lie for a good cause, and in this case, my great-grandmother was able to convey more truth on her son's birth certificate than the word "bastard" ever would have.  

Unexpected Relatives

I found another second cousin today.  On Facebook.  On accident.  He had replied to a school friend's post, and his surname was familiar, so I asked where he was from and suggested we might be cousins.  Turns out our grandparents were siblings. 

One of the best things about second cousins is that they are distant enough relations that I can say who my paternal grandparents were and we can establish how we're related without raising any eyebrows.  I don't have to tell them my father's name or that he was an anonymous sperm donor.  People don't usually expect to know their second cousins, so we say "small world!" and laugh and move on.  I've done it before.

And as soon as I wrote that sentence, he messaged me, "Who is your dad?  My dad wants to know."

I didn't know what to say.  If I told him my father's name, it might get back to my uncle who still lives in the same town, and even though he knows who I am, I don't know how he feels about my existence or my advertising it.  If I said, "He was an anonymous sperm donor, but he doesn't like people to know, so keep it quiet," that would raise eyebrows and probably more interest.  It would also make me an interloper who doesn't belong in their family, at least in some people's eyes.  This is why I don't reach out to my first cousins or my uncles, even though they are the ones with the old photos and the family stories I want.  It would be awkward.  I would feel like a tattletale or even a liar, claiming the family of a father who won't claim me.  I didn't realize how much of a secret I was still keeping with his identity.  I have never kept his name secret from friends or advertised it publicly, but today was the first day someone who wasn't a friend asked for it.  Even on my Ancestry tree his name is private, and no one has ever asked for it.  Today was the first time I had to draw a line. 

I didn't respond to my second cousin.  Ignoring his question seems rude and I don't like doing it, but I don't know how to respond, so Jerry suggested I just never respond because it will do the least damage.  I'm on here posting everything I remember about my mother, but I'm still keeping my father's secret.  I feel nauseous. 

A Minor DC Discovery

I had my birth certificate out the other day because of bank-related nonsense.  As I was putting it away, back in the lock box with the passports and the social security cards and the letter from my sperm donor father, a familiar name caught my eye.  The doctor who delivered me was the same doctor who had inseminated my mother.  I don't mean my biological father.  I mean he was the man who is now known for having impregnated patients with medical student sperm.  I learned his name from another local DC person long after the last time I'd look at my birth certificate.  I don't know why it surprised me.  I guess I had assumed he had been something more than a run-of-the-mill obstetrician and that he wouldn't do prenatal checkups or deliver babies.  Impregnating women with donor sperm doesn't require a medical mastermind, but I'd assumed he'd specialized in infertility.  I'd assumed he treated... something.

I wonder if the same doctor delivered Hans.  I was conceived the semester our father started medical school.  Hans was born the semester that he graduated.  It doesn't matter.  I'm just grasping at things we might have in common.  I wonder if Hans and I have ever known someone in common.  I wonder if my father and I have ever unwittingly been in the same building at the same time.  I never thought about these things before I knew who he was.  Then I thought how likely it was.  

I wonder if any medical student anonymous sperm donor has ever examined a woman carrying his child, or been present for the birth of his own child.  It didn't happen to me because first years don't see patients, but what if someone donated as a third year or fourth year?  Third and fourth years see patients.  If a medical student had his obstetrics and gynecology rotation when a patient or four were gestating his offspring, it seems like there would be a decent chance he might see one of them.  He could see one of those patients or possibly even be present for the birth of his own offspring and, based on the secrecy and alleged lack of record keeping at the hospital where I was created, there would be no way he or anyone else would ever know.   

When I Die

My grandmother didn't get a funeral.  Neither did my uncle.  Or my grandfather.  I'm pretty sure their bodies were donated to science because that's how you can dispose of human remains for free and get out of doing any of the official paperwork.  I've checked.  I don't want to be disposed of as cheaply as possible and then promptly treated like I never existed.  When I die, I want someone to acknowledge it.

I told my husband what I want to happen when I die, but I want to write it down too for future reference.  I have life insurance, so this shouldn't cost anyone anything from their own pockets.  First, I want to be cremated and my ashes spread somewhere outside.  I don't really care where, but I don't want to be embalmed or buried or kept in an urn under someone's bed.  Next, I want there to be a party.  It doesn't need to be at a funeral home and people don't need to be somber or anything, but I want there to be good liquor and rich food.  Maybe hold it at someone's house or at a park if the weather is good.  My best friend should be invited, obviously.  My remains do NOT need to be present because gross, but there are some flattering pictures of me on my Facebook page if someone wants to print one out.

People should tell funny stories and maybe have some music.  It doesn't all have to center around me, but someone should give a toast at some point acknowledging my death and the fact that I was once alive.  Maybe someone could read the letter Jerry once wrote me describing what's great about me because I can't imagine anyone coming up with nicer things to say about me than that.  She described me as though I'm already the person I've always wanted to be.  I think she might actually see me that way.  I don't even know how that's possible.  I keep that letter in my jewelry box.

I would also like a factually accurate obituary run in at least a couple local newspapers for the genealogical purposes of future generations.  I don't want my genetically erroneous birth certificate to be all there is to go on.  Here is a template for what information I would like included:

Christina Rossetti Martin* was born April 15, 1982 in Cincinnati, Ohio with the assistance of third party reproductive technology.  She died at [specific date] in Little Township, Illinois after a short battle with colon cancer (I'm guessing) and a long span of being toyed with by God and man.  Christina was raised by parents Annie Wilkes Rossetti* and Paul Rossetti.  She met her husband Michael Martin when they were college classmates at The University of New York.  They settled in Little Township, Illinois in 2010 and had one child, Eliza.  Christina is [survived by / preceded in death by] her mother Annie, her biological father Joseph Von Trapp, her adoptive brother Dante, her paternal half-siblings Hans and Simone Von Trapp, possibly some other paternal half-siblings no one knows about, her husband Michael, their daughter Eliza, any grandchildren that might exist, and her best friend Jerry.  And to anyone who says she "lost her battle with cancer" as though "winners" live forever, she would like to cordially invite you to go fuck yourself and remember that death is coming for you too!

*You know by now that these are all fake names, right?  Well, almost all of them anyway.

Being DC: They Won't Understand

Back before I found my biological father, I posted my story anonymously on a fairly large website.  Because apparently it sometimes pops up when people do a Google search for "I just found out my father was an anonymous sperm donor" or similar, I have had the honor of being the first donor conceived person some other DC adults have contacted.  Based on those exchanges, there are some things I want to make sure every donor conceived person knows, especially those donor conceived people who haven't yet met another donor conceived person or gotten a chance to talk about how they feel about being donor conceived.  If you fall into any part of those categories, this is for you.

The first thing is that, while not everyone feels the same way about being donor conceived, most people have feelings about it, and that's normal.  If you're bewildered or crying yourself to sleep or spending hours every night trying to find information on who your anonymous biological father and half-siblings might be, or even if you aren't, you're normal.  You haven't done anything wrong.  You aren't crazy, you aren't weak, and you aren't a bad child to the parents who raised you simply because you want to know more or because the revelation of your parentage blew your mind.  You're reacting in a normal fashion to some mind-blowing news.  That's not to say therapy would be out of the question to help you deal with this news -- I advocate therapy for pretty much everybody because I love the simple elegance of paying someone to listen to me rant -- but you're still normal.

The second thing I want DC people to know is this:  people who aren't donor conceived will not understand.  I am surprised this is the case, and I will grant you my evidence is only anecdotal, but it has been the case with everyone I know.  EVERYONE.  My longtime best friend Jerry is the kindest, most empathetic person I've ever met, and she still doesn't get it.  That's not to say talking about it with her isn't still helpful -- talking with her is always helpful -- but the most she can empathize with my situation is to say, "I don't get it.  I know it's important to you and a big deal to you, and I can only assume I might feel the same way in your position, but I don't understand why it matters."  Jerry grew up with two biological parents (one great, one balls to the wall crazy) and a biological sister who is one of her best friends.  When I wanted to write to my biological father to introduce myself and to ask if he'd tell my half-siblings about me, she didn't think I should do it.  She knew he was unlikely to want anything to do with me, so she didn't see the point in reaching out at all -- and that's a normal reaction.  If an empathetic person who is close friends with her parent and sister doesn't understand the allure of possibly meeting new family, who will?

My therapist had essentially the same response as Jerry.  So did my husband.  These are good and kind people with no personal skin the game that they're trying to protect.  They just don't get it, and I know it's not because they don't try or don't care.  I think it's just too foreign a concept for people outside that situation to relate to.  Parentage seems like it shouldn't matter.  I get that.  Why does it matter?  I don't know.  I could name twenty reasons it matters to me, but I can't convince someone else that my reasons are valid.  That seems to be one of the big strikes against rights to information for donor conceived people.  We can't prove that it matters.  For most people in this kind of situation though -- donor conceived people, adopted people, people who have no idea who one or both of their parents are for whatever reason -- it matters.  Even if a person doesn't want to get to know that parent, not being allowed to know who they are usually matters.  Not having a choice in getting to know them matters.  There are too many people who feel the same way I do for you to convince me these feelings are wrong.

This is why I think it's important for donor conceived people to be in contact with other donor conceived people.  They will be able to relate in ways even the best friends and family can't.  You'll see the whole spectrum of attitudes and feelings a person can have toward being donor conceived (it's pretty wide, and I suspect a lot of the quiet majority sits near the middle), and you'll see that you're normal.  I don't post on any DC online groups, but I do read some of them.  It makes me feel normal (thank you, PCVAI and Worldwide Donor Conceived People Network -- please note these are groups exclusively for donor conceived people, not for parents of the donor conceived as most websites are, which makes for a very different atmosphere).  As much as I feel like a bit of an outsider pretty much anywhere I lurk, I feel an unusual sense of belonging in these groups.  People often disagree, but there is a sense of mutual respect and understanding that I appreciate.

5 Reasons I Contacted My Sperm Donor Father That Have Nothing to Do with Money

I read this article today, an interview with a former anonymous sperm donor who is incensed by the idea that his offspring might find out his name and contact him.  He is a doctor who has "made a few bob along the way" and says he is concerned his offspring will try to lay claim to it.  Or that they'll ask him for money and he'll feel uncomfortable saying no...?  I'm not sure what his specific concern is.  He also mentions that he has adult children from his marriage and has not told them about their secret half-siblings, of whom there are at least twenty.  That secret coming to light seems to me to be a more probable dilemma.

This sperm donor reminds me of an extended family member (and doctor) who sent out a mass email to everyone in the family who supports socialized healthcare, attesting that they just want to take her hard earned money for themselves.  No one on that recipient list had ever asked her for anything, and none were hard up by any stretch, but it was -- in my mind -- her way of saying, "I have more money than you and therefore anything you do that I don't like is because you are poor and jealous and greedy."  It wasn't really about money, at least not about hers vs. theirs.  But it was a decent attempt to make family feel bad for supporting something they believed in that she didn't like.  This reminds me of that.

This sperm donor also says he fears for his physical safety because his offspring could come to his home and assault him.  He says he and his wife are thinking of moving to... throw off how long it would take for people to look up his new address online?  I don't know what he would hope to achieve by moving.  Would he stop working too?  Would he keep moving forever?  I think waiting to see if there is a credible threat and then filing a restraining order if necessary would be more effective than living life "on the lam," but I'm unacquainted with the laws in Australia.  Also, my solution would do nothing to evade offspring who reach out in a normal, benign manner.

As I see it, refusing contact with offspring through a sperm bank is like being on the Do-Not-Call list for telemarketers.  You've made your desire for no contact known, but there's still a chance you might get an unwanted call someday.  No one can shield you from all unpleasant encounters and possibly having to say "no" yourself at some point.  But you probably won't have to do more than that. 

"When you think about it, anyone who contacts you is going to have a problem.... If I have that many kids, what is the chance of having one who is disabled?" he ponders.  I don't quite know what to make of the argument that anyone who contacts him is "going to have a problem."  Does he mean only people with issues, such as disabilities or the aforementioned poverty and anger, will reach out to him?  I can see why he might believe that, I suppose, but as someone on the other end, I don't think it's accurate.  I wouldn't try to argue that I have no problems, but I certainly wouldn't share them with my biological father.  Nor with the parents who raised me, for that matter.  I might have problems, but I'm not unhinged.  For context, here is why I contacted my biological father, none of which had to do with money:

5 Reasons I Contacted My Sperm Donor Father

1. I wanted to know what he's like.  I had questions, like does he have any hobbies or interests in common with me.  I'm so different from the people who raised me.  Is it because I'm like him?  (Answer: at least in part, yes)

2. I wanted to meet him someday if he was open to that.  I wanted to hear his voice and see his mannerisms.  I wanted to see the resemblance from online photos amplified.  It's a surreal experience seeing myself mirrored back in someone else.  I couldn't see it until I saw old photos of him. 

3. He has adult children who I wanted to talk to if they were willing, and I thought they'd be more open to the news of a secret half-sister if they heard it from someone they knew.  (Answer: They were open to it, and I think hearing the news from their father helped immensely.)

4. I wanted him to know I exist.  I wanted him to waste a few of his brain cells thinking about me, looking me up online, wondering about me, the way I wondered about him. 

5. I was the closest DNA match to a close relative on a DNA database.  I wanted to give my biological father a chance to disseminate information as he saw fit before the news came out by other means.

You know what I did when he wrote me a letter saying never to contact him again?  Nothing.  Not a damn thing.  When I sent him a letter introducing myself, I cost him as much as anyone else who has ever sent him an ad or another piece of unwanted mail.  And if I had contacted him a second time, harassing him or demanding money, or tried to assault him at his home as the doctor in this article fears, he would have been justified in sending me a cease and desist letter and/or filing a restraining order. 

What he really needed to be concerned about was his secret getting out.  He had to decide who to tell and who he might reasonably be able to keep hiding the secret from.  That should be -- and if we're being honest, probably is -- the primary concern of any anonymous sperm donor:  keeping the secret.  Even if a sperm bank doesn't give your name to your offspring, a DNA test might uncover it, as mine did.  I walk around everyday with 50% of his DNA coursing through my veins and pretty much every part of my body.  And DNA is highly traceable. 

I know it's hard to accept that the anonymity you were once promised is dead, but this is the new reality.  You can continue to focus on imagined crises like "what if they want my money" or you can face the issues that are inevitable.  If you donated sperm, tell your wife and children.  There is a very high probability that this news will come out, probably in your lifetime, and everyone will handle it better if you're the one to tell them. 

Finding a Purpose

When I was younger, I remember telling my mother I felt I must have some kind of purpose in life.  I didn't know what it was yet, but I believed I had one.  My mother said, "You have delusions of grandeur."

I can't fathom anyone or anything having a purpose now, especially myself.  This isn't my mother's fault.  Intellectually, I know she was wrong about most things in life.  I know agreeing with her in this is unhelpful at best.  When I struggled to find the bright side of my own bad situations as a kid -- I referred to it as 'finding my consolation prize' -- she yelled in frustration, "Not everything happens for a reason!  Bad things just happen!"  I know that, even if she was right, even if there is no bright side to anything ever and being alive is just the worst, allowing myself to believe that is the unhappiest thing I can do.  If there is no point to anything in life, the only reason to live is because you enjoy it.  And it's almost impossible to enjoy it when you're sure everything sucks.  Still, I have trouble enjoying it.  I guess I'm like her that way, in spite of myself.

When I decided to get married, I made a bigger decision than just the marriage.  I was unwilling to affix myself to someone only to bring us both down, as I feel my mother -- or, more accurately, my parents -- did.  Saying yes to getting married meant I would never allow myself to give up.  I would keep trying to get better and be better.  I had to go all in, particularly in terms of mental health.  My mother had been afraid of admitting there might be something mentally wrong with her.  I was more afraid of ending up like my mother.

When I decided to have a child, I doubled down.  I didn't want to be a negative impact on her life.  I didn't want her to have to turn out poorly because of me or turn out okay in spite of me.  I read a bunch of books.  I went through more therapy.  I picked up some skills.  I'm better than I was when I started out, but I am afraid I'm still not who I want to be.  I don't know if I ever will be.  I'm honestly not sure if it's possible to become that close to perfect.  I'm not sure if other people are closer to perfect than me, care less about it, or have the same feelings and fears that I do.

My daughter can't be my purpose in life.  She will always be who I work for the most and who is most important in my life, but I can't set my goals around her.  I want to raise her to be self-sufficient and happy, and I don't want to feel like a failure if I can't make her read as early as I want or become as popular as I'd like.  I need to set specific goals that I can control and that won't infringe upon her space and growth. 

I don't want to run a marathon because it sounds unpleasant.  (Yes, now I'm just listing what I don't want.)  I don't want to register for any kind of race, actually.  I'd like to have something that quantitative as a goal though.  That kind of training seems pretty straight-forward and logical, and I like those qualities.

I don't want to have housekeeping-based goals anymore.  I've tried them, but my house is in a contact state of entropy, and while beating back the chaos and disarray is important, it's not fulfilling or gratifying.  It's easier to make it a routine and try to forget I'm doing it while distracting myself with podcasts.

My therapist suggested finding biological family as a goal, but it seems infinite.  I found my father, but I can't find any more half-siblings unless they take DNA tests.  I also can't make people want to talk to me.  It also sort of makes me feel worse.  Every time I make a connection or learn something new, it gives me a little high, but the highs aren't sustainable.  Then I'm left with the lingering feeling that I will never feel like I belong, even in my own family, and when I see people who are embraced by their families, my own exclusion feels more sharply painful and I can't help but feel like this situation is my fault.  Maybe if I'd been cleverer, they'd like me better.  Maybe if I'd gotten a PhD, he'd talk to me.  I don't like feeling this way.  Looking for family is like a bad drug.

I would like help.  I'm not particularly depressed at this point in my life.  I feel this fact is important to point out.  I just don't have a purpose or any goals really, and I would like help making some.  They don't need to be important, but I need to learn to believe they are.  I hesitate to post this here because I try to make this blog about true stories and family secrets, but I guess this might count as a secret:  I've never felt like I belonged here.  I'm afraid I never should have been here.  I also hesitate to post this because I know some people actually see this blog, unlike the journal where I started this post, which is only read by me and possibly the NSA, and I'm afraid someone will tell me I'm a horrible, ungrateful person for having these feelings.  I don't like being called horrible and ungrateful.  I have some issues with it.  Anyway, I recognize that I'm very privileged and very fortunate.  It's not my life I have a problem with, just my perception. 

One of the reasons I started this blog was to get some stories out of my system.  I don't want to hang onto them anymore, not the ones that make me angry or sad, and writing them down helps me feel okay with forgetting them, and it helps me not to want to talk about them all the time.  Another reason was because ten or twenty years ago I set myself the goal of writing down all the things that my mother forbid me to talk about and publishing it into a book called We Told You Not to Tell, after the Anne Lamott quote on writing about family ("If your childhood was less than ideal, you may have been raised thinking that if you told the truth about what really went on in your family, a long bony white finger would emerge from a cloud and point at you, while a chilling voice thundered, 'We told you not to tell!' But that was then.").  I was angry, and I was tired of the secrets and lies.  The writing helps with that.  It makes me feel sane and heard.  It also feels like an amusing vengeance project that would make my mother's head explode if she knew about it, in spite of its anonymity.

I don't know how to end this post.  I just needed to get this out.

We Look Like Sisters

I changed my profile picture on Facebook, and my half-sister who I've still never met commented that a friend saw her looking at it and thought it was a picture of her.  These are the little things that make me happy.  We look similar because we're sisters. 

Grandpa Was a Bastard

My maternal grandfather was born out of wedlock in the 1920s.  He grew up with his mother and two maternal half-siblings.  His mother married several times over the course of her life, and she worked as a washerwoman when she was between husbands.  Grandpa's father was a widower who left his children with his parents when his wife died.  He went on to live in local boarding houses and impregnate women in the area.  But I didn't know any of these things when I started looking for their names.

My cousin's letters from our grandmother mentioned some of my grandfather's half-siblings' names.  She said Grandpa hadn't really known his father, so he ran away from home at the age of 14 to find him.  He learned that his half-siblings from his father's marriage had moved to California, so he traveled half-way across the country to find them.  Using the names in her letter, I found them too.  Census records showed that their father had been in their hometown all along.  I wonder if Grandpa found him when he got back home.  I wonder if he ever found him.

Grandma's letter mentioned another paternal half-sibling showing up at the house when Grandpa was in his sixties.  She was another illegitimate child.  She had already found the California half-siblings, the legitimate ones, and they had pointed her in my grandfather's direction.  Grandma didn't mention her name in her letters.  Much like my own half-siblings, she would have to take a mass market DNA test for me to find her now, if she's still alive.  Much like my own half-siblings, we don't know how many more are out there.

Since Grandpa had taken his father's surname and his parents were never married, I had no idea what his mother's first or last name had been.  I couldn't find a single census record with my grandfather on it until after he married my grandmother, and there is no evidence that he even existed by that name until he enlisted in the army during WWII.  Grandma's letters did mention his maternal half-siblings' first names though, so I took the names I had and enlisted help from an internet forum.  Someone who is better at genealogical research than me found them as children living with their mother in the right area under a different surname.  The next census showed them at the same location but with yet another surname.  They were simply listed with whatever married name my great-grandmother had at the time, which explained why it had been so hard to find them.  In reality, all my great-grandmother's children had different surnames and different fathers.  All were dead by the time I found this information. 

I was surprised to learn my great-grandmother had lived in the same city as my family until she died when my mother was a teenager.  My mother had never mentioned her.  She had inherited her middle name from her.  I wonder if they ever met.  According to her death certificate, she had died a couple of days before she was formally pronounced dead.  I think this means she wasn't found immediately.  I haven't been able to find a headstone for her or any evidence of a burial or an obituary. 

I found some old photos of my great-grandfather that had been posted on Ancestry.com by descendants of his legitimate children.  I have his nose.

My Mother's Oral Family History

I have always known who my biological mother is.  She was the same mother who raised me.  But finding out about her family history was harder than finding my biological father.  I haven't found a single person in her family interested in genealogy but me, and our family is full of secrets that we only know from oversharing.

I grew up within a mile of my maternal grandparents and saw them at least once a week for the first eighteen years of my life.  There were certain things I grew up knowing, stories I grew up hearing over and over again, but they were specific and limited.  I knew my grandmother had had ten pregnancies in eleven years.  I knew my only biological aunt had died of SIDS on Christmas Eve and that my then 3-year-old mother had tormented her own mother with the persistent question, "Where is my baby?" for weeks afterward.  I knew my mother had been named after her own maternal grandmother, and that her grandmother had hated her own name so much that she'd gone by her middle name nearly all her life.  These were some of the facts my mother recited to me regularly, just like the story of my birth (I "ripped [her] from end to end") and of my brother's adoption ("she called and said, 'Do you want a peanut?' A peanut is what they called premature babies.")  They were her oral history, and they are embedded in my brain.

I knew my grandmother had gotten married at age fifteen because she wanted to run away from home, but I didn't know she had been running away from her "wicked stepmother."  I knew her own mother had married at fourteen and lost custody of my then 2-year-old grandmother when she became a teenage divorcee, but I didn't know my great-grandfather's name or that he was a college graduate, unlike anyone else in my family for the next 75 years.  Grandma's maiden name was Adams, or Addams* -- I didn't know which -- and my mother hated my great-grandfather for taking Grandma away from her mother.  He "didn't like girls," my mother told me when I asked why Dante had been invited to meet him and I hadn't.  I knew he'd written and self-published a memoir that my mother claimed was a catalogue of his sexual exploits, but I didn't know the name of the book, and I didn't know that he lived within a half-hour's drive of my home for over a decade of my childhood.  I didn't know he was the only person in my family to live to the age of ninety, or that he'd died within a year of "the love of his life," my Grandmother's longtime stepmother.  I didn't know they had given my grandmother a half-sister, who had finished college but who hadn't been able to bear children of her own.  She has an adopted daughter close to my age who has a graduate degree.  They're both on Facebook now.  She looks like a younger, healthier, more affluent version of my grandmother. 

I've mentioned before how my cousin helped me with my search for maternal family by providing old letters our grandmother had sent her.  Our grandmother used to write letters once a week to pretty much everyone she knew who lived out of state.  My cousin had kept several years worth of Grandma letters.  She pulled them out of storage at my request.  She said they shared too much information, that she wouldn't be comfortable rereading them if Grandma had still been alive.  They read more like private journal entries than something you would say to a granddaughter.  Those letters also held names and dates I hadn't absorbed from my mother's oral history.  They gave me search terms, and the knowledge my mother had embedded in my brain filled in the blanks.  My cousin didn't know the things I knew -- even our great-grandmother's first name -- so I was able to fill in some blanks for her too. 

I assume my great-grandmother's first pregnancy ended in miscarriage because she got married at the age of fourteen and didn't give birth to my grandmother until over a year later.  I learned these dates from documents on Ancestry.com.  She got divorced in the 1930s at the age of 18 and lost custody of my grandmother to her ex-husband.  My great-grandfather left my then 2-year-old grandmother with his parents and moved on.  My great-grandmother spent time in the Deep South, though neither I nor my cousin knows why.  My grandmother's letters made it sound like purgatory.  My grandmother lived with her own grandparents until she was eight.  She became close with her father's only sister, whose name I recognized because my grandmother had visited her every week at her nursing home until she died in the 1990s.  At the age of eight, my grandmother moved in with her newly remarried father and the woman she referred to in letters as her "wicked stepmother."  Her father called her the love of his life.  My grandmother wasn't happy there.  As I mentioned earlier, she ran away at the age of fifteen to marry my grandfather.  She didn't know how to cook, and she never learned how to drive.  Neither of them finished high school.  They eloped on my grandfather's birthday, allegedly to distract the court registrar out of asking for proof of my grandmother's age.  It apparently worked.  Their marriage license lists her age as 18.  My eldest uncle was born ten months later.

I've found my great-grandparents' headstones.  My great-grandmother remarried at least once, but she survived her final husband, so even her death certificate doesn't list his full name.  My mother told me she died of stomach cancer, but her death certificate cites cardiac arrest.  I've learned that death certificates list whatever catalyst literally killed the person that day and will never say what led to what killed them, like cancer or diabetes or blunt force trauma.  I come from a long line of ladies who battled their weight, and my great-grandmother relished the easy weight loss that came with dying of stomach cancer.  One of the few pictures I've seen of her shows her svelte figure standing with both legs inside one leg of pants, demonstrating that she was half her previous size and delighted by it. 

My grandmother's aneurism created the same effect.  The weight melted off when she spent months on a liquid diet, unable to swallow most food without choking.  She recovered though and was unhappily battling her weight again by the time she died some fifteen years later.  One of my last memories of her was of visiting her and my grandpa's duplex and witnessing one of her daily weigh-ins.  She had gained weight and was disappointed.  She was in her seventies. 

Mental illness was my mother's best diet.  She lost around eighty pounds when she stopped eating or drinking or getting up from the couch in her early fifties.  She was pleased with the effect and bragged to me over the phone in the days leading up to my wedding.  It was the thinnest she had been since before I was born.  She commandeered one of my dad's old wheelchairs because she had grown too weak to walk.  When I saw her next, she had aged twenty years.  Her formerly thick brown hair was sparse and grey, and the skin hung loose from her face and neck like wax dripping from a candle.  She reminded me of Emperor Palpatine.

My grandfather's lineage was much harder to trace because his parents were never married or lived together, and he never spoke about either of them.  I met one of his half-siblings once as a child, but it turns out there were at least six more.  More on Grandpa next time.