After my parents divorced, my mother moved in with her parents. She was receiving monthly maintenance payments from my dad that would have covered rent on a nice apartment in their inexpensive town -- especially if she'd cashed any of the maintenance checks from their legal separation, which my brother had found in a pile by the front door with the rest of the mail for the last several months -- but she wasn't functioning at that point. She didn't shower, she rarely ate, and to my knowledge, she mostly slept.
My grandparents had recently sold their house and started renting half a duplex in the next town over. There were suggestions that they'd needed the money from the sale, that my grandfather had been too generous with the union pension he'd been receiving since the age of 55 and was running low on funds, but my mother also claimed the new house was easier to get around in now that they were both old and frail.
I don't know how my mother moved in. I know she didn't pack. I know my brother Dante was at my parents' house a lot at the time and saw the empty storage pod she left behind in the driveway. I presume one of her brothers came and retrieved her. Her two remaining brothers were caring for their parents at the time, coming over a couple times per day to do laundry and cook and clean for them. My mother became their third ward. I presume she slept on the couch since my grandparents were living in a 2-bedroom home and hadn't shared a room in my lifetime.
A number of months later, my grandmother died. She was in her seventies. Most people in my mother's family don't live to see seventy. My great-grandparents all died in their sixties, except for my grandma's "deadbeat dad," who was educated and well off and lived into his nineties. My mother's numerous siblings have all died now except for one. None have made it to sixty but her. So it seems odd to say my grandmother died unexpectedly in her seventies, but at the same time, I don't know what precipitated her death. She'd suffered an aneurism a decade earlier, and she'd had a stroke or two since then. She didn't get around well anymore, hence my uncles taking over the housework and caregiver duties. My mother said my grandfather killed her.
My dad called to tell me my grandmother had died. Dante had told him. He said there were some shady circumstances surrounding her death and no one really knew what had happened. He said my grandmother had been hospitalized a few days earlier and had asked to file a police report alleging domestic abuse. I don't know if the police report was actually filed. I don't know that my grandfather was the perpetrator of the abuse. I wouldn't put it past him to hurt someone, but he was also old and so morbidly obese that he'd barely been able to walk in years. He would have still been stronger than my grandmother though. The last time I saw her, she couldn't walk without assistance. She couldn't get to her walker without assistance.
My mother mailed me a card not long after her mother died. It had a picture of a sad puppy on the front and said something like "I miss you" on it. The inside was completely covered with her handwriting. She said it was 3:30 in the morning. She said her dad was screaming at her as she wrote (not surprising if you've met him), telling her to get out of his house. She had accused him of killing her mother, and he was blind with rage and kicking her out (my family has long been a fan of the kicking-each-other-out power play). I don't remember what else the card said -- mostly things about how bad everything was. It seemed so bizarre when I received it, the absurdity of the sappy cover art juxtaposed with the insanity on the inside (and I don't mean my mother, though she did seem unhinged even in greeting card form, but the insanity of the entire situation). I hadn't wanted to throw it away, but I couldn't stand to look at it either because I was still in contact with my mother at the time and any contact felt painful, so I'd hid it from myself, only to find it again years later when it fell unexpectedly from a book I'd opened. That time I threw it away. I don't know what happened between my mom and her dad after that night, but I know she didn't move out until he died a couple of years later.
There would be no funeral for my grandmother. She had many friends, and eventually her church congregation came together to hold a memorial service in her honor, but I didn't find out until it was over. This was the first in a line of family deaths that would receive no services or burial or acknowledgment of any kind from family. The bodies are burned at the cheapest crematorium in town, which also offers completely free disposal of remains for any body that has been donated to science, as well as handles the necessary paperwork.
I check that crematorium's website occasionally for new obituaries, doing a search for my mother's married and maiden names. It's how I found out another uncle had died, as well as my grandfather. My grandfather's obituary said nothing beyond "proud WWII vet." Nothing about being preceded in death by his wife of sixty years, nothing about their children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren who survived them. I suspect there is no one left in my family who is willing to write obituaries anymore.
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Monday, July 6, 2015
The Great Clean Out of '88 (or The Time My Mother Thought Her SIL Would Leave Her Three Children in Her Will)
When I was in elementary school, I learned that my Aunt Janie had a brain tumor. She was my aunt by marriage, but since she married Uncle Charles long before I was born, all I really understood was that she was my aunt and she was my cousins' mother. Uncle Charles -- my mother's brother -- had committed suicide when I was a baby, so Aunt Janie had been raising my cousins on her own for a number of years when we found out about the brain tumor.
I don't remember if there was a time when we thought Aunt Janie might survive. As I recall, my mother told me she was dying and not to say something crass like "get well soon" because she was never going to get better and was going to be dead soon. I think the doctors had given her six months to live. That was how long I knew about it anyway. My cousins were in middle school and high school at the time, and my mother made an effort to get the youngest out of the house as much as possible. She was one of my favorite cousins and always nice to me, despite being several years my senior, so I was delighted to get to spend time with her. My mother told me she was trying to get my cousin out of the house so she could take her mind off her mother dying and so Aunt Janie could rest.
The Great Clean Out started shortly thereafter. We were clearing out the basement so that it could finally be finished. My mother told my dad, my brother Dante, and me that she would be adopting my three cousins when Aunt Janie died, and we needed to get the basement finished to make room for them all. In hindsight, it seems odd I don't remember my dad making any kind of fuss about this huge decision to more than double the number of kids in the house. But then again, he has always seemed to prefer to let her do whatever she wants and then complain about how badly everything is going and how none of it is his fault.
My mother ordered a large dumpster that sat on our front lawn, and we spent every weekend for I don't remember how long hauling garbage and debris up the stairs and out of the house. Dante and Dad and I fantasized about what else we'd do with all the space. Everyone wanted new bedrooms. Dante and I each tried to lay claim to my dad's master bedroom on the ground floor when he said he'd be moving downstairs, but Mom overruled us and said it would be hers. She'd moved back and forth between sleeping on the living room couch and the lower bunk bed in Dante's room for as long as I'd been alive. Dad was going to have a soundproof music studio in the basement too, he said. In my imagination, the windowless finished basement was bright and clean in a way our cave-like, hoarded ground floor home had never been.
My parents had never gotten a sump pump installed, in spite of the basement flooding every time it rained and the house allegedly having been built on a spring. Eventually the deeper slantings of the basement held a full inch of standing water on any given day. It became dangerous for my dad to use his elevator -- a forklift with half-walls constructed years ago by his own father -- because the floor of it submerged into the dark water before touching down. The only wheelchair-accessible shower in the house was in that basement, in spite of the fact that my parents had had the home custom built to be accessible.
There was visible mold on most of the things that had been stored down there. Dante and I wore leather work gloves as we lugged enormous amounts of wet cardboard and paper up to the dumpster. My dad mostly sifted through moldy old books and papers while my mother "sorted," supervised Dante and me, and occasionally loaded the elevator with full file boxes too heavy to carry up the stairs.
I didn't like cleaning out the basement. It wasn't an enjoyable way to spend my weekends as a first-grader, but I was thrilled about the idea of having a newly finished, clean home and a new bedroom and not one but THREE new siblings. It was like a whole new life. The promise of what was going to be was enough to keep me cleaning and hauling. Besides, I was seven -- I had no choice.
This went on for at least a couple of months. Shortly before Aunt Janie's death, my mother learned that Aunt Janie's parents were moving into her home to take care of my cousins. My mother was upset. She had wanted to adopt my orphaned cousins, and now she couldn't, and it sounded like she was never even considered. She seemed jealous. She seemed angry. The time was close enough to my aunt's death that I think my mother might have actually expected to be left the children in her will with no advance conversation about it. Lots of movies she liked played out this way. Baby Boom comes to mind. She really loved Baby Boom. In hindsight, I think a primary reason she took my cousin out so often was as a means of throwing her hat in the ring as the future guardian. Aunt Janie had started declining her offers near the end. She said she wanted to spend more time with her kids.
I was a bit disappointed that I would not, in fact, be getting new siblings, but my disappointment was outweighed by a sense of how good a plan they had in place. My cousins wouldn't have to move. They wouldn't have to change schools. They would be cared for by their grandparents, who I could safely assume already knew them better than my parents did. Losing their mother would be the only massive adjustment they'd have to undertake. Even as a 7-year-old, I could tell this plan was much better than having anyone else adopt my cousins.
My mother immediately called a halt to the clean out. There was no point anymore, she said. I wanted to continue. I thought having a fixed up home for ourselves to live in counted as a point, but I was seven.
We never even got close to having the basement cleared, and there was no plan to work on the ground floor at all. In hindsight, I think non-hoarders could have cleared that basement in a weekend since everything down there had become moldy, soaked garbage, but I don't think it would have mattered. My parents avoided having work done on the house whenever possible, and to this day there is still no sump pump. My dad still doesn't have a handicapped-accessible shower on the ground floor either. The place is still infested with mold, not all the exterior doors close all the way, there has been a known but unaddressed termite problem since the '90s, and most of the electrical work is shot. My dad still talks about fixing up the house with a five-figure government grant for which he supposedly qualifies, but he has no desire to get a sump pump installed because "that would cost hundreds of dollars." The last photo he sent me was of one of his new "collections." There was still hoard in the background that he probably doesn't even see anymore.
I don't remember if there was a time when we thought Aunt Janie might survive. As I recall, my mother told me she was dying and not to say something crass like "get well soon" because she was never going to get better and was going to be dead soon. I think the doctors had given her six months to live. That was how long I knew about it anyway. My cousins were in middle school and high school at the time, and my mother made an effort to get the youngest out of the house as much as possible. She was one of my favorite cousins and always nice to me, despite being several years my senior, so I was delighted to get to spend time with her. My mother told me she was trying to get my cousin out of the house so she could take her mind off her mother dying and so Aunt Janie could rest.
The Great Clean Out started shortly thereafter. We were clearing out the basement so that it could finally be finished. My mother told my dad, my brother Dante, and me that she would be adopting my three cousins when Aunt Janie died, and we needed to get the basement finished to make room for them all. In hindsight, it seems odd I don't remember my dad making any kind of fuss about this huge decision to more than double the number of kids in the house. But then again, he has always seemed to prefer to let her do whatever she wants and then complain about how badly everything is going and how none of it is his fault.
My mother ordered a large dumpster that sat on our front lawn, and we spent every weekend for I don't remember how long hauling garbage and debris up the stairs and out of the house. Dante and Dad and I fantasized about what else we'd do with all the space. Everyone wanted new bedrooms. Dante and I each tried to lay claim to my dad's master bedroom on the ground floor when he said he'd be moving downstairs, but Mom overruled us and said it would be hers. She'd moved back and forth between sleeping on the living room couch and the lower bunk bed in Dante's room for as long as I'd been alive. Dad was going to have a soundproof music studio in the basement too, he said. In my imagination, the windowless finished basement was bright and clean in a way our cave-like, hoarded ground floor home had never been.
My parents had never gotten a sump pump installed, in spite of the basement flooding every time it rained and the house allegedly having been built on a spring. Eventually the deeper slantings of the basement held a full inch of standing water on any given day. It became dangerous for my dad to use his elevator -- a forklift with half-walls constructed years ago by his own father -- because the floor of it submerged into the dark water before touching down. The only wheelchair-accessible shower in the house was in that basement, in spite of the fact that my parents had had the home custom built to be accessible.
There was visible mold on most of the things that had been stored down there. Dante and I wore leather work gloves as we lugged enormous amounts of wet cardboard and paper up to the dumpster. My dad mostly sifted through moldy old books and papers while my mother "sorted," supervised Dante and me, and occasionally loaded the elevator with full file boxes too heavy to carry up the stairs.
I didn't like cleaning out the basement. It wasn't an enjoyable way to spend my weekends as a first-grader, but I was thrilled about the idea of having a newly finished, clean home and a new bedroom and not one but THREE new siblings. It was like a whole new life. The promise of what was going to be was enough to keep me cleaning and hauling. Besides, I was seven -- I had no choice.
This went on for at least a couple of months. Shortly before Aunt Janie's death, my mother learned that Aunt Janie's parents were moving into her home to take care of my cousins. My mother was upset. She had wanted to adopt my orphaned cousins, and now she couldn't, and it sounded like she was never even considered. She seemed jealous. She seemed angry. The time was close enough to my aunt's death that I think my mother might have actually expected to be left the children in her will with no advance conversation about it. Lots of movies she liked played out this way. Baby Boom comes to mind. She really loved Baby Boom. In hindsight, I think a primary reason she took my cousin out so often was as a means of throwing her hat in the ring as the future guardian. Aunt Janie had started declining her offers near the end. She said she wanted to spend more time with her kids.
I was a bit disappointed that I would not, in fact, be getting new siblings, but my disappointment was outweighed by a sense of how good a plan they had in place. My cousins wouldn't have to move. They wouldn't have to change schools. They would be cared for by their grandparents, who I could safely assume already knew them better than my parents did. Losing their mother would be the only massive adjustment they'd have to undertake. Even as a 7-year-old, I could tell this plan was much better than having anyone else adopt my cousins.
My mother immediately called a halt to the clean out. There was no point anymore, she said. I wanted to continue. I thought having a fixed up home for ourselves to live in counted as a point, but I was seven.
We never even got close to having the basement cleared, and there was no plan to work on the ground floor at all. In hindsight, I think non-hoarders could have cleared that basement in a weekend since everything down there had become moldy, soaked garbage, but I don't think it would have mattered. My parents avoided having work done on the house whenever possible, and to this day there is still no sump pump. My dad still doesn't have a handicapped-accessible shower on the ground floor either. The place is still infested with mold, not all the exterior doors close all the way, there has been a known but unaddressed termite problem since the '90s, and most of the electrical work is shot. My dad still talks about fixing up the house with a five-figure government grant for which he supposedly qualifies, but he has no desire to get a sump pump installed because "that would cost hundreds of dollars." The last photo he sent me was of one of his new "collections." There was still hoard in the background that he probably doesn't even see anymore.
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Weird "Donor Conceived" Plot Ideas
People talk a lot about the danger of donor conceived people who are unwittingly half-siblings getting married and/or having children together. I don't think that is the weirdest thing that could happen. Here are some story ideas I have:
1) Incest Schmincest
A woman grows up knowing she was conceived with anonymous donor sperm. As she gets older, she decides she wants to conceive her own child with anonymous donor sperm. Unwittingly chooses her biological father to be the donor (she intentionally went to a different cryo bank than her mother, but he donated all over the place) and births her own half-sibling. Only finds out the truth later when DNA testing in an attempt to find each of their fathers gets super confusing.
2) Snowflake
A child created through embryo adoption takes an autosomal DNA test and has a 100% genetic match with another person in the database. Immediately assumes he is a clone. Then wonders if his future self traveled back in time to contact him. Ultimately finds out he was part of a fertilized egg that split in two and that he has an identical twin brother old enough to be his grandfather (this would have to take place several decades in the future obviously, simply because we don't have any frozen embryos that old yet). They meet up and cause twin shenanigans in spite of the age difference. It's kind of sad though because he finds out his biological parents and multiple other siblings all lived together as a family and that most of them died before he was born. Spoiler: The kid goes all Chuck Palahniuk on the storyline and blows up the cryo bank in a confusion-fueled rage, only for his much older and -- surprise! -- dying identical twin to voluntarily take the fall. And he can because they have DNA evidence linking him to the crime scene!
3) Snowflake 2 -- The Avalanche Begins
A law passes in the US stating that, because life begins at conception, all embryos have a right to be born. Women in need of money in this dystopian future sign up to be gestational surrogates to the thousands (millions?) of cryogenically frozen embryos currently in storage, some of which were abandoned nearly a hundred years ago. The "snowflake children" are simultaneously seen as a solution to the dwindling number of newborns up for adoption, and they are doled out to waiting families, foster homes, and orphanages. Some might be sold on eBay. I'm not sure where this plot would go, but it would have to follow one of the snowflakes as an adult or it would be just too sad and awful to be endured. This one has a very Brave New World / Children of Men vibe to me.
4) The Twin Project
Scientists discover how to make fertilized eggs split, creating sets of identical twin embryos in petri dishes (this can't be manipulated yet, can it? I'm under the impression it currently just happens when it happens). The doctors at one Assisted Reproductive Technology center do this with every fertilized egg created for IVF, implanting one of the embryos in the intended mother and freezing its twin to be sold through embryo adoption. Basically a few years pass and lots of people find out they have identical twins in other families. We also find out some of the sets of twins were kept by the hospital and used for research, hence the name. If you want to get just a shade darker of a plot than this, read Never Let Me Go. It's actually about cloning, but it hit home for me in a lot of ways as a DC adult, and it's a beautifully written book.
I think #4 is the only one we don't currently have the technology to make happen (I don't think we do anyway). It's actually possible #1 has already happened in the US and no one knows yet. It may not be likely, but I think the fact that there is no record keeping preventing it is food for thought. Can a woman even request her DNA be tested against her chosen donor sperm before insemination to ensure they aren't closely related? That should come up in one of those comedy films about donors having hundreds of offspring -- the prolific donor who has kept his secret so well finds out his sister's child was conceived via anonymous sperm donor too and it's his!
1) Incest Schmincest
A woman grows up knowing she was conceived with anonymous donor sperm. As she gets older, she decides she wants to conceive her own child with anonymous donor sperm. Unwittingly chooses her biological father to be the donor (she intentionally went to a different cryo bank than her mother, but he donated all over the place) and births her own half-sibling. Only finds out the truth later when DNA testing in an attempt to find each of their fathers gets super confusing.
2) Snowflake
A child created through embryo adoption takes an autosomal DNA test and has a 100% genetic match with another person in the database. Immediately assumes he is a clone. Then wonders if his future self traveled back in time to contact him. Ultimately finds out he was part of a fertilized egg that split in two and that he has an identical twin brother old enough to be his grandfather (this would have to take place several decades in the future obviously, simply because we don't have any frozen embryos that old yet). They meet up and cause twin shenanigans in spite of the age difference. It's kind of sad though because he finds out his biological parents and multiple other siblings all lived together as a family and that most of them died before he was born. Spoiler: The kid goes all Chuck Palahniuk on the storyline and blows up the cryo bank in a confusion-fueled rage, only for his much older and -- surprise! -- dying identical twin to voluntarily take the fall. And he can because they have DNA evidence linking him to the crime scene!
3) Snowflake 2 -- The Avalanche Begins
A law passes in the US stating that, because life begins at conception, all embryos have a right to be born. Women in need of money in this dystopian future sign up to be gestational surrogates to the thousands (millions?) of cryogenically frozen embryos currently in storage, some of which were abandoned nearly a hundred years ago. The "snowflake children" are simultaneously seen as a solution to the dwindling number of newborns up for adoption, and they are doled out to waiting families, foster homes, and orphanages. Some might be sold on eBay. I'm not sure where this plot would go, but it would have to follow one of the snowflakes as an adult or it would be just too sad and awful to be endured. This one has a very Brave New World / Children of Men vibe to me.
4) The Twin Project
Scientists discover how to make fertilized eggs split, creating sets of identical twin embryos in petri dishes (this can't be manipulated yet, can it? I'm under the impression it currently just happens when it happens). The doctors at one Assisted Reproductive Technology center do this with every fertilized egg created for IVF, implanting one of the embryos in the intended mother and freezing its twin to be sold through embryo adoption. Basically a few years pass and lots of people find out they have identical twins in other families. We also find out some of the sets of twins were kept by the hospital and used for research, hence the name. If you want to get just a shade darker of a plot than this, read Never Let Me Go. It's actually about cloning, but it hit home for me in a lot of ways as a DC adult, and it's a beautifully written book.
I think #4 is the only one we don't currently have the technology to make happen (I don't think we do anyway). It's actually possible #1 has already happened in the US and no one knows yet. It may not be likely, but I think the fact that there is no record keeping preventing it is food for thought. Can a woman even request her DNA be tested against her chosen donor sperm before insemination to ensure they aren't closely related? That should come up in one of those comedy films about donors having hundreds of offspring -- the prolific donor who has kept his secret so well finds out his sister's child was conceived via anonymous sperm donor too and it's his!
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Goodness of Fit
When I got pregnant with my daughter, I wondered what she would be like. I wondered what she would look like, what she would be best at, what she would enjoy. I had no preconceived notions about who she might be. I was so different from my own parents that I knew she could be anyone.
People in the parenting realm often cite "goodness of fit" when discussing how well a parent and child get along. The idea is that you might unintentionally favor one of your children over the other because you have the same temperament or the same hobbies, while the other might function as a sort of stranger in your home. I don't know how well my adoptive brother, Dante, and I fit with our parents. It didn't seem like any of us fit well, but my mother and I bonded more than the others. Even when she favored Dante over me, it seemed more like a strategic alliance than a familial bond.
Aside from her vast volunteer duties and some persistent personality issues, my mother almost seemed like a blank slate. She knew what foods she liked -- steak, shrimp, lots salt, nothing green -- but she didn't otherwise seem to know what she liked. Who she was could vary wildly. On the plus side, this meant she fully embraced my hobbies, including buying us season tickets to nearly every live theater in our area when I showed a passion for it. She said I made her feel "cultured."
My dad and I had little in common. He knew what he liked -- jazz, stargazing, bad '80s movies -- but his hobbies seldom overlapped with my own. He introduced me to the television show "Ghost Hunters" around the time I was trying to divorce him from my increasingly mentally ill mother, and that gave us something to talk about on our phone calls until I changed cable providers and no longer got the right channel. He liked what he liked. He was unwilling or unable to feign interest in topics simply because they mattered to me.
I took music lessons from a young age, but I didn't enjoy them, only the attention gleaned from performing. I dreaded the actual live performances, but people would hug and praise me afterwards, and I lived for that. I liked museums and art galleries, though I only got to see them when a friend's parents or a school field trip would take me there. I loved reading. My mother read me stacks of books until I took over the job myself at the age of four. I don't think either of my parents has read a book cover to cover since that day. I'm also good at baking and enjoy eating elaborate vegetarian meals. I love spicy international cuisine, despite my mother's insistence that we don't like onions or most vegetables and that everything should be served "plain" and "mild."
My daughter was born and soon gained a reputation as a smart, funny child with a sunny disposition. She's still very young and will undoubtedly grow and change, but she fits in well with both my husband and myself. My mother used to say, "I hope you have a child just like you someday," when she got angry, like it was a curse or a threat. I battled depression from a very young age (maybe four?), but I tried hard to be good at things and to be kind and to overcome my many fears. My thought was that if I had a child like myself -- kind, funny, hardworking, smart -- but happy, that would be great. Why would anyone not want that? I thought.
Something that I haven't heard much about "goodness of fit" in parenting is that, if a child is raised by her biological parents and they don't hate each other, it should come fairly naturally. My daughter inherited half her genes from me and the other half from one of my closest friends. My husband and I have lived together easily for many years, and while we have a variety of hobbies and interests between us, we have the same sense of humor and priorities. We get along. We are raising our daughter together in our home, so theoretically, whether you believe nature or nurture is the greater factor, we were always going to have a certain goodness of fit. That didn't occur to me until well after she was born.
I don't think I have the same sense of humor as the parents who raised me. To be honest, it's hard to remember what made them laugh or made them seem happy, but I remember us all favoring different movies. I don't know if I got my gallows humor from genetics or from my life experiences, but my mother didn't approve of it. I had to pretend not to laugh at the things I found amusing for fear of being scolded or told I'm a bad person. My half-brother, Hans, has that same dark sense of humor. He's says its one of our German qualities.
My biological father reads and enjoys history and science. My half-siblings do too. My sister likes baking as much as I do. These might all just be coincidences. They're all common hobbies after all. But I didn't share them with the parents who raised me. I'm the most educated person in my family, but tied for least educated in my father's family. Can a person really be more academically inclined -- and I don't mean smart, which I think a lot of my family was in spite of what they thought themselves, but loving of school and learning -- simply because she descended genetically from someone who was? There are other potential explanations, after all.
I'm sure I must've had more in common with my mother than I can remember now. Surely I didn't just inherit similar hair and some maladaptive behaviors. She liked crafts when I was little, like I did. We only did them if there were other children around, like visiting cousins or a Girl Scout troop, but she liked doing crafts. We did jigsaw puzzles together. We both liked going out to dinner and a movie. She liked making things beautiful, which was hard because her hoarding tendencies meant she could only beautify our home through shopping and filling it with more things. I don't remember my mother very well, especially how she used to be before she went off the deep end. I have a hard time remembering why I used to love her so much. I'm not sure if that sounds more mean or sad, but it's true. It is what it is, I guess.
When my daughter started developing a personality of her own, I was surprised. She wasn't a stranger. Nothing about her seemed to be pulled from the ether. She was so much like me. Sometimes when I saw her from certain angles, she looked like my childhood self. She cocked her eyebrows and made mischief faces like me. She mirrored my reactions and behaviors -- if I wanted her to be calm and happy, there was little I had to do beyond modeling good behavior and giving her "cuddles and kisses," as she likes to say. She is young. She still has a lot of growing and changing ahead of her, and she will make friends and have experiences outside my home and outside my control, but none of this parenting stuff has been as impossible or even as illogical as I was led to believe it would be.
I don't know what I'm trying to say. I don't think living with your two biological parents solves all your problems, or even ensures goodness of fit. If I'd had more in common with my dad, we might have enjoyed each other's company more, but I still don't think it would have been a great relationship because I think he'd still only value in me what he already values. Having more in common with my mother would have solved nothing. I'm confident that her self-loathing would have only caused her to hate me more, the more I resembled her. I don't think my half-siblings get along particularly well with their parents either, though I do know they have more functional relationships than I do with any of mine. We're all very different people though. I blame the mental illness more than anything for our lack of good fit. I believe the parts of my mother that weren't fundamentally broken were fundamentally good. Maybe. I guess I think the worst situation would be like Dante's -- being raised by two people whose love is conditional when it's present at all, who aren't related to you, who are not mentally healthy and cannot see far enough past their own pain to consistently give a fuck about you. It does make me wonder what kind of relationship Dante might have had with his biological parents though. Or with anyone else really.
People in the parenting realm often cite "goodness of fit" when discussing how well a parent and child get along. The idea is that you might unintentionally favor one of your children over the other because you have the same temperament or the same hobbies, while the other might function as a sort of stranger in your home. I don't know how well my adoptive brother, Dante, and I fit with our parents. It didn't seem like any of us fit well, but my mother and I bonded more than the others. Even when she favored Dante over me, it seemed more like a strategic alliance than a familial bond.
Aside from her vast volunteer duties and some persistent personality issues, my mother almost seemed like a blank slate. She knew what foods she liked -- steak, shrimp, lots salt, nothing green -- but she didn't otherwise seem to know what she liked. Who she was could vary wildly. On the plus side, this meant she fully embraced my hobbies, including buying us season tickets to nearly every live theater in our area when I showed a passion for it. She said I made her feel "cultured."
My dad and I had little in common. He knew what he liked -- jazz, stargazing, bad '80s movies -- but his hobbies seldom overlapped with my own. He introduced me to the television show "Ghost Hunters" around the time I was trying to divorce him from my increasingly mentally ill mother, and that gave us something to talk about on our phone calls until I changed cable providers and no longer got the right channel. He liked what he liked. He was unwilling or unable to feign interest in topics simply because they mattered to me.
I took music lessons from a young age, but I didn't enjoy them, only the attention gleaned from performing. I dreaded the actual live performances, but people would hug and praise me afterwards, and I lived for that. I liked museums and art galleries, though I only got to see them when a friend's parents or a school field trip would take me there. I loved reading. My mother read me stacks of books until I took over the job myself at the age of four. I don't think either of my parents has read a book cover to cover since that day. I'm also good at baking and enjoy eating elaborate vegetarian meals. I love spicy international cuisine, despite my mother's insistence that we don't like onions or most vegetables and that everything should be served "plain" and "mild."
My daughter was born and soon gained a reputation as a smart, funny child with a sunny disposition. She's still very young and will undoubtedly grow and change, but she fits in well with both my husband and myself. My mother used to say, "I hope you have a child just like you someday," when she got angry, like it was a curse or a threat. I battled depression from a very young age (maybe four?), but I tried hard to be good at things and to be kind and to overcome my many fears. My thought was that if I had a child like myself -- kind, funny, hardworking, smart -- but happy, that would be great. Why would anyone not want that? I thought.
Something that I haven't heard much about "goodness of fit" in parenting is that, if a child is raised by her biological parents and they don't hate each other, it should come fairly naturally. My daughter inherited half her genes from me and the other half from one of my closest friends. My husband and I have lived together easily for many years, and while we have a variety of hobbies and interests between us, we have the same sense of humor and priorities. We get along. We are raising our daughter together in our home, so theoretically, whether you believe nature or nurture is the greater factor, we were always going to have a certain goodness of fit. That didn't occur to me until well after she was born.
I don't think I have the same sense of humor as the parents who raised me. To be honest, it's hard to remember what made them laugh or made them seem happy, but I remember us all favoring different movies. I don't know if I got my gallows humor from genetics or from my life experiences, but my mother didn't approve of it. I had to pretend not to laugh at the things I found amusing for fear of being scolded or told I'm a bad person. My half-brother, Hans, has that same dark sense of humor. He's says its one of our German qualities.
My biological father reads and enjoys history and science. My half-siblings do too. My sister likes baking as much as I do. These might all just be coincidences. They're all common hobbies after all. But I didn't share them with the parents who raised me. I'm the most educated person in my family, but tied for least educated in my father's family. Can a person really be more academically inclined -- and I don't mean smart, which I think a lot of my family was in spite of what they thought themselves, but loving of school and learning -- simply because she descended genetically from someone who was? There are other potential explanations, after all.
I'm sure I must've had more in common with my mother than I can remember now. Surely I didn't just inherit similar hair and some maladaptive behaviors. She liked crafts when I was little, like I did. We only did them if there were other children around, like visiting cousins or a Girl Scout troop, but she liked doing crafts. We did jigsaw puzzles together. We both liked going out to dinner and a movie. She liked making things beautiful, which was hard because her hoarding tendencies meant she could only beautify our home through shopping and filling it with more things. I don't remember my mother very well, especially how she used to be before she went off the deep end. I have a hard time remembering why I used to love her so much. I'm not sure if that sounds more mean or sad, but it's true. It is what it is, I guess.
When my daughter started developing a personality of her own, I was surprised. She wasn't a stranger. Nothing about her seemed to be pulled from the ether. She was so much like me. Sometimes when I saw her from certain angles, she looked like my childhood self. She cocked her eyebrows and made mischief faces like me. She mirrored my reactions and behaviors -- if I wanted her to be calm and happy, there was little I had to do beyond modeling good behavior and giving her "cuddles and kisses," as she likes to say. She is young. She still has a lot of growing and changing ahead of her, and she will make friends and have experiences outside my home and outside my control, but none of this parenting stuff has been as impossible or even as illogical as I was led to believe it would be.
I don't know what I'm trying to say. I don't think living with your two biological parents solves all your problems, or even ensures goodness of fit. If I'd had more in common with my dad, we might have enjoyed each other's company more, but I still don't think it would have been a great relationship because I think he'd still only value in me what he already values. Having more in common with my mother would have solved nothing. I'm confident that her self-loathing would have only caused her to hate me more, the more I resembled her. I don't think my half-siblings get along particularly well with their parents either, though I do know they have more functional relationships than I do with any of mine. We're all very different people though. I blame the mental illness more than anything for our lack of good fit. I believe the parts of my mother that weren't fundamentally broken were fundamentally good. Maybe. I guess I think the worst situation would be like Dante's -- being raised by two people whose love is conditional when it's present at all, who aren't related to you, who are not mentally healthy and cannot see far enough past their own pain to consistently give a fuck about you. It does make me wonder what kind of relationship Dante might have had with his biological parents though. Or with anyone else really.
Saturday, June 27, 2015
Sharing Health Information with Donor Half-Siblings
I have ulcerative colitis. It's one of the two diseases under the Inflammatory Bowel Disease umbrella (Crohn's is the other). I have to take pills twice a day to keep the inflammation down, and I have to have a colonoscopy every couple years to screen for colon cancer since IBD increases my risk. Mine is a very mild case that doesn't otherwise interfere with my day-to-day life. Most people aren't so lucky. Some need medications with significant side effects, or need surgery, or never get the inflammation quite under control.
IBD is largely considered to be a heritable illness. Every gastroenterologist I've met since the time of my diagnosis over a decade ago has asked if I had a family history and, when I said I didn't but that my father was an anonymous sperm donor, the doctor assured me bowel disease ran in my father's family. Therefore I was unsurprised when I learned that my paternal grandmother had colon cancer when she died. It did mean, however, that I should probably stop avoiding my regular colonoscopies the way I have been for the last several years because now I knew of two increased risk factors: the IBD and the family history of colon cancer.
My half-siblings probably know about the cancer. Our father talks to them, after all, and they actually met our grandmother, who died nearly fifteen years before I learned of her existence. But I don't know if I should tell them about my IBD. It seems awkward to bring up, but I do know if they ever go to gastroenterologists themselves for whatever reason, the intake paperwork will ask if they have any family with ulcerative colitis, among other things, and having a sibling with a disease does count as an increased risk for developing the disease yourself.
If I develop cancer, I will tell them. If they told me about their own health information, or that they were having some kind of health problems, I would be comfortable bringing it up then too. But for now, I think I will keep the IBD to myself. I'm afraid they'd think I'm weird for bringing it up. We just aren't that close.
I'd be interested to hear what other people -- donor conceived or adopted or not -- think on this topic. What would you do with this relevant-but-not-necessarily-critical information?
IBD is largely considered to be a heritable illness. Every gastroenterologist I've met since the time of my diagnosis over a decade ago has asked if I had a family history and, when I said I didn't but that my father was an anonymous sperm donor, the doctor assured me bowel disease ran in my father's family. Therefore I was unsurprised when I learned that my paternal grandmother had colon cancer when she died. It did mean, however, that I should probably stop avoiding my regular colonoscopies the way I have been for the last several years because now I knew of two increased risk factors: the IBD and the family history of colon cancer.
My half-siblings probably know about the cancer. Our father talks to them, after all, and they actually met our grandmother, who died nearly fifteen years before I learned of her existence. But I don't know if I should tell them about my IBD. It seems awkward to bring up, but I do know if they ever go to gastroenterologists themselves for whatever reason, the intake paperwork will ask if they have any family with ulcerative colitis, among other things, and having a sibling with a disease does count as an increased risk for developing the disease yourself.
If I develop cancer, I will tell them. If they told me about their own health information, or that they were having some kind of health problems, I would be comfortable bringing it up then too. But for now, I think I will keep the IBD to myself. I'm afraid they'd think I'm weird for bringing it up. We just aren't that close.
I'd be interested to hear what other people -- donor conceived or adopted or not -- think on this topic. What would you do with this relevant-but-not-necessarily-critical information?
Thursday, June 25, 2015
An Open Letter to My Father
I found you. I did the thing I thought I'd never be able to do and I found you. I wrote you a letter, and you wrote back. You answered my questions and told me never to contact you again because your wife doesn't like it, and that is where we stand now. I am so fortunate to have gotten this far. I know your name and your favorite book and where you grew up. I know how my grandparents died and I've seen their wedding photo. I have photos of more of your extended family than of my mother's, thanks to Ancestry.com. More photos of you than of the parents who raised me. There used to be more photos of my family, but a lot got lost when my mother fell apart.
I don't know if you meant for your letter to sound condescending or if I read that tone into it. It doesn't matter really. I never expected you to want a relationship with me. Lunch someday would have been nice, just to hear your voice and have a conversation, but if I'm being honest, I never expected it to happen. My friends didn't even think you'd respond. In hindsight, I wonder if you told your wife about my letter because you're so open with her or if she opened it herself because she reads your mail. It doesn't matter really. Just curious. I know so little about you and your family dynamic.
Thank you for telling my brother and sister about me. In hindsight, I realize you were probably up against a wall. After your brother saw me on a DNA database, he had to contact your son to get a hold of your current phone number to ask you if you had any illegitimate children he should know about, so a dangerous number of people already knew something was up. You probably thought you couldn't keep me a secret if you'd wanted to. Regardless, thank you for telling my brother and sister about me, even if you did forbid me to contact them myself, as though forbidding me is a thing you have the power to do. They both reached out to me before I even received your letter, so that took some of the sting out of it. Did you ever consider they might want to know their donor conceived siblings? They do, and it seems like it didn't occur to you. I'm glad you told them though. I know you aren't close with them and they're not close with each other, but they seem like good people and they welcomed me.
Your son and I look a lot alike. You'll know that if you've looked me up online. I guess we both look like you. We have the same sense of humor too. Yours? Your daughter tagged me as her sister on Facebook, much to the shock of some people who thought they knew the entirety of your immediate family. I think that's what she was going for though -- shock factor. She does that a lot, doesn't she? It was exactly what you forbid me to do in your letter -- exactly what I wouldn't dare to post online myself -- so I got a kick out of it too. I hope to get to know them better.
If I find more siblings, I'm going to give them your name and the information you gave me. You know that, right? They might contact you, just like I did. Prepare yourself for that.
I don't really talk to my parents anymore. I could never actually tell you this, but you brought them up in your letter as Paragons of Child Wanting, so I want you to know. I don't tell most people about my parents because it's not their business and I don't want them marking me as damaged goods or a terrible person, but the people who know my parents -- my best friend and my husband and my extended family -- they understand. If I wanted you to know about my parents, I could post one of my wedding photos to Facebook where your kids would see it and wonder what's wrong with my mother. They might be shocked enough to mention it to you, though the more I learn about your relationship with them, the more I doubt they tell you much. That's how severely mentally ill my mother is -- it's obvious even in still photos. Just thought you ought to know. The things wrong with my dad don't come through in a photo. They'd just see his wheelchair.
I don't know what I still want from you. I wrote to you in the hopes that you'd tell your kids about me and tell me about yourself and maybe someday agree to meet me for lunch. You gave me most of that and I still want more. I realize I'm in a place of privilege to be able to want so much. I didn't think I'd ever know who you are and here I am wanting to hear your voice and wanting to know what kind of jokes make you laugh. I've already found everything about you I could online. I wish you'd start a blog or something.
I think what I really want, at least what I really want for now, is for you to feel something for me. Even if it's regret for the actions that led to my existence. I'd settle for regret, you know. I want you to lay awake at least once thinking about me, even if what you're thinking is how much you hate me for finding you and writing to you and getting your wife all "irrationally angry," as your son put it. I want to be something to you, and I will never tell you these things. Even if we were in contact and you wanted to get to know me, I could never tell you these things. I would be always on my guard, always showing my best self, never taking my mask off because I know that I have always been nothing to you, just as I have spent the last thirty years being nothing to my half-siblings, and I have to constantly be earning the privilege of their inclusion. One slip up and they can write me off forever because, while people say you can't choose your family, we both know that isn't true. If my mother can say you're "just a donor" and you "don't count," that's a choice, even if you both made it for me. My parents adopted another child -- that was a choice that was made for him. And when I decided I didn't want to see any of them ever again, that was my choice. You can indeed choose your family. I want your children to continue choosing me, and I am afraid they won't, and you won't, no matter what I do.
I'm glad I reached out to you. I don't know if I ever want to hear from you again. It's not a secret wish I hold onto or anything. Mostly, when one of us dies, I just want the regrets to be on your end.
I don't know if you meant for your letter to sound condescending or if I read that tone into it. It doesn't matter really. I never expected you to want a relationship with me. Lunch someday would have been nice, just to hear your voice and have a conversation, but if I'm being honest, I never expected it to happen. My friends didn't even think you'd respond. In hindsight, I wonder if you told your wife about my letter because you're so open with her or if she opened it herself because she reads your mail. It doesn't matter really. Just curious. I know so little about you and your family dynamic.
Thank you for telling my brother and sister about me. In hindsight, I realize you were probably up against a wall. After your brother saw me on a DNA database, he had to contact your son to get a hold of your current phone number to ask you if you had any illegitimate children he should know about, so a dangerous number of people already knew something was up. You probably thought you couldn't keep me a secret if you'd wanted to. Regardless, thank you for telling my brother and sister about me, even if you did forbid me to contact them myself, as though forbidding me is a thing you have the power to do. They both reached out to me before I even received your letter, so that took some of the sting out of it. Did you ever consider they might want to know their donor conceived siblings? They do, and it seems like it didn't occur to you. I'm glad you told them though. I know you aren't close with them and they're not close with each other, but they seem like good people and they welcomed me.
Your son and I look a lot alike. You'll know that if you've looked me up online. I guess we both look like you. We have the same sense of humor too. Yours? Your daughter tagged me as her sister on Facebook, much to the shock of some people who thought they knew the entirety of your immediate family. I think that's what she was going for though -- shock factor. She does that a lot, doesn't she? It was exactly what you forbid me to do in your letter -- exactly what I wouldn't dare to post online myself -- so I got a kick out of it too. I hope to get to know them better.
If I find more siblings, I'm going to give them your name and the information you gave me. You know that, right? They might contact you, just like I did. Prepare yourself for that.
I don't really talk to my parents anymore. I could never actually tell you this, but you brought them up in your letter as Paragons of Child Wanting, so I want you to know. I don't tell most people about my parents because it's not their business and I don't want them marking me as damaged goods or a terrible person, but the people who know my parents -- my best friend and my husband and my extended family -- they understand. If I wanted you to know about my parents, I could post one of my wedding photos to Facebook where your kids would see it and wonder what's wrong with my mother. They might be shocked enough to mention it to you, though the more I learn about your relationship with them, the more I doubt they tell you much. That's how severely mentally ill my mother is -- it's obvious even in still photos. Just thought you ought to know. The things wrong with my dad don't come through in a photo. They'd just see his wheelchair.
I don't know what I still want from you. I wrote to you in the hopes that you'd tell your kids about me and tell me about yourself and maybe someday agree to meet me for lunch. You gave me most of that and I still want more. I realize I'm in a place of privilege to be able to want so much. I didn't think I'd ever know who you are and here I am wanting to hear your voice and wanting to know what kind of jokes make you laugh. I've already found everything about you I could online. I wish you'd start a blog or something.
I think what I really want, at least what I really want for now, is for you to feel something for me. Even if it's regret for the actions that led to my existence. I'd settle for regret, you know. I want you to lay awake at least once thinking about me, even if what you're thinking is how much you hate me for finding you and writing to you and getting your wife all "irrationally angry," as your son put it. I want to be something to you, and I will never tell you these things. Even if we were in contact and you wanted to get to know me, I could never tell you these things. I would be always on my guard, always showing my best self, never taking my mask off because I know that I have always been nothing to you, just as I have spent the last thirty years being nothing to my half-siblings, and I have to constantly be earning the privilege of their inclusion. One slip up and they can write me off forever because, while people say you can't choose your family, we both know that isn't true. If my mother can say you're "just a donor" and you "don't count," that's a choice, even if you both made it for me. My parents adopted another child -- that was a choice that was made for him. And when I decided I didn't want to see any of them ever again, that was my choice. You can indeed choose your family. I want your children to continue choosing me, and I am afraid they won't, and you won't, no matter what I do.
I'm glad I reached out to you. I don't know if I ever want to hear from you again. It's not a secret wish I hold onto or anything. Mostly, when one of us dies, I just want the regrets to be on your end.
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Father's Day for the Donor Conceived
Father's Day hits a lot of donor conceived people hard. This will be my first Father's Day knowing who my biological father is. We aren't in touch. There is no question of if I should reach out to him or send him something -- he said he wants nothing to do with me, so he will never hear from me again. I wonder if his Real Children will say anything about him on Facebook that day. We're Facebook friends, my younger half-siblings and I. I'd like to see more old photos of him, hear facts about what he's like as a person, but I don't expect them to say anything about him to me or on social media. They post a lot, but the last time either of them posted photos of our father to social media was close to a decade ago. I can't believe Facebook has been around for so long.
I won't be reaching out to my dad -- my non-biological social father -- on Father's Day either. I made a decision not to spend more on that relationship than I get out of it, and not to do anything that will make me feel resentful of the fact that he seems mostly indifferent toward me. Initially that meant I wouldn't manage his finances anymore or do him favors unless he occasionally prefaced his requests with "how are you?" or acknowledged my daughter's existence. I told him I wanted him to ask after me and my daughter. He said okay, but he never did it. His messages were about doing things for him, so they could have been to anyone.
It took time and effort to turn the reins of his finances over to him, but it saved me a lot of time and effort soon thereafter. I also appreciate not having to watch him squander his new savings on tens of thousands of dollars of music equipment and a car he can't drive and -- for some unknown reason -- a collection of over one hundred pipes. Hoarders need their collections, I guess.
A year or two ago, I decided I could afford mentally and emotionally to send greetings on holidays and his birthday. Email only, and never more than a line of text because that was how much I could do without having to think about it. That was how much I could do without starting to feel bad. But even that much started to feel like a drain. Last Thanksgiving I realized I didn't even want to expend that minimal amount of energy trying to stay in contact. I would respond to anything he sent me, but I wasn't going to struggle to keep this relationship alive. The 2014 holiday season passed with not a word between us. Surprisingly, it felt good to me. I had more energy to spend with friends and family who are pleasant and seem to love me.
Father's Day has never been particularly hard for me. I've been lucky that way. My dad always accepted gifts from me with a smile, so the holiday never held the stress or looming threat of Mother's Day. This year my daughter is old enough to color a card and help make plans. I mentioned the possibility of taking her dad out for ice cream, and she hasn't stopped talking about it. Maybe we'll make pizza or go out for lunch too. My husband never has expectations for holidays, so we'll do something simple and have fun together, like we do for Mother's Day. I expect my brother Hans will have similar traditions. He's a father too now. I expect I'll see a photo of him and his son on Facebook this Sunday. I wonder what my sister will do. I wonder if they'll call our father privately, or send him a card or a gift. I wonder how he responds to cards and gifts and phone calls. I wonder what he's like.
I hope he thinks of me. He is my father, after all, regardless of how he looks at the situation. I don't recall thinking of my biological father much on Father's Day in the past, but this is the first year my father has been a specific person, rather than some nebulous idea. He's Joseph Von Trapp now, rather than "a doctor with blue eyes who is a probably good at math." It's strangely new and real, having a person for a father, and I think of him. I don't expect him ever to care for me, but I want him to think of me occasionally too, even if it's with regret. Regret would be better than nothing. Regret would mean I'm real to him too.
I won't be reaching out to my dad -- my non-biological social father -- on Father's Day either. I made a decision not to spend more on that relationship than I get out of it, and not to do anything that will make me feel resentful of the fact that he seems mostly indifferent toward me. Initially that meant I wouldn't manage his finances anymore or do him favors unless he occasionally prefaced his requests with "how are you?" or acknowledged my daughter's existence. I told him I wanted him to ask after me and my daughter. He said okay, but he never did it. His messages were about doing things for him, so they could have been to anyone.
It took time and effort to turn the reins of his finances over to him, but it saved me a lot of time and effort soon thereafter. I also appreciate not having to watch him squander his new savings on tens of thousands of dollars of music equipment and a car he can't drive and -- for some unknown reason -- a collection of over one hundred pipes. Hoarders need their collections, I guess.
A year or two ago, I decided I could afford mentally and emotionally to send greetings on holidays and his birthday. Email only, and never more than a line of text because that was how much I could do without having to think about it. That was how much I could do without starting to feel bad. But even that much started to feel like a drain. Last Thanksgiving I realized I didn't even want to expend that minimal amount of energy trying to stay in contact. I would respond to anything he sent me, but I wasn't going to struggle to keep this relationship alive. The 2014 holiday season passed with not a word between us. Surprisingly, it felt good to me. I had more energy to spend with friends and family who are pleasant and seem to love me.
Father's Day has never been particularly hard for me. I've been lucky that way. My dad always accepted gifts from me with a smile, so the holiday never held the stress or looming threat of Mother's Day. This year my daughter is old enough to color a card and help make plans. I mentioned the possibility of taking her dad out for ice cream, and she hasn't stopped talking about it. Maybe we'll make pizza or go out for lunch too. My husband never has expectations for holidays, so we'll do something simple and have fun together, like we do for Mother's Day. I expect my brother Hans will have similar traditions. He's a father too now. I expect I'll see a photo of him and his son on Facebook this Sunday. I wonder what my sister will do. I wonder if they'll call our father privately, or send him a card or a gift. I wonder how he responds to cards and gifts and phone calls. I wonder what he's like.
I hope he thinks of me. He is my father, after all, regardless of how he looks at the situation. I don't recall thinking of my biological father much on Father's Day in the past, but this is the first year my father has been a specific person, rather than some nebulous idea. He's Joseph Von Trapp now, rather than "a doctor with blue eyes who is a probably good at math." It's strangely new and real, having a person for a father, and I think of him. I don't expect him ever to care for me, but I want him to think of me occasionally too, even if it's with regret. Regret would be better than nothing. Regret would mean I'm real to him too.
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