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AS PROMISED, I dedicate the rest of the day to donor research, taking detailed notes about fertility doctors and sperm banks in Atlanta on a lined yellow tablet I previously used to jot down interesting profiles (including Pete’s) from Match.com. As I surf and read and pop into various chat rooms, I feel increasingly excited and empowered, liberated to let the whole marriage dream die. All I need is some good sperm and a doctor to put it in me. It isn’t going to be easy—or inexpensive—but it is much more straightforward than finding “The One,” and more important, blissfully within my control.
Every few hours, I go find Gabe somewhere in the house or yard and share nuggets of my newly acquired expertise. He listens intently, the way he always does, but I have the feeling he’s mostly humoring me. His interest is finally piqued when I stumble upon a website dedicated to sharing the testimonies, both positive and negative, of parties involved in third-party reproduction, from the egg and sperm donors, to the donor-conceived children, to the surrogate mothers, to the actual parents.
“If you were the product of a sperm or egg donor, do you think that something would feel missing in your life?” I ask him after reading aloud a particularly troubling account of a donor-conceived teenaged girl who knew virtually nothing about her biological father and is now grappling with her identity, concluding with I will never forgive my mother for her selfish decision, one that has left a permanent hole in my heart and soul.
“Sounds like a typical melodramatic teenager to me,” Gabe says, glancing over his shoulder. A homebody, he has stayed in tonight to watch Broadcast News, one of his favorite movies, and hits pause as he finishes his reply. “If she knew her old man, she’d just find something else to hate her mom for.”
“Maybe,” I say. “So you don’t think you’d feel bitter?”
“If I didn’t know my biological father?” Gabe asks with a wry look because he actually doesn’t know his biological father, who died of prostate cancer just after Gabe’s birth. The only father he’s ever known is his stepdad, the soft-spoken, kindly professor his mother married when Gabe was seven. For a couple of years, Gabe called him Stan, but at some point started to call him Dad.
“But even though you didn’t know your real father,” I say, trying to differentiate the scenarios, “you at least knew who he was. He was never a complete mystery.”
“But a sperm donor doesn’t have to be a complete mystery, either,” he says. “You said yourself, earlier today, that there are all sorts of different arrangements.”
“True,” I say, thinking of the story I read about the girl who connected with her donor dad and biological half siblings via Facebook. “But that presents another whole set of issues.”
Gabe shrugs, still staring at the frozen screen, right in the middle of the scene where Albert Brooks sweats profusely. “Everyone has issues. And at the end of the day…you are who you are.”
I blink and say, “What does that mean? ‘You are who you are’?”
He sighs. “Let’s say I found out that I actually came from donated sperm, rather than the man I know from old photos and a few memories….Or let’s say that my mom had an affair with the milkman and I just found out….Then I’d still be exactly who I am today.”
I stare at him blankly.
“I mean, it’s just a donated cell,” he says. “At the end of the day, it’s no different than a donated heart or cornea or kidney.”
“It’s totally different,” I say, even though I want to believe in what he’s saying. “A cornea is not the same as half your DNA.”
“Granted,” he says. “But it also doesn’t change who you really are. Whether I came from my biological father or donated sperm, I was still raised by my mom and Stan. My dad.”
I take a deep breath and say, “But what if I had a baby with donated sperm and didn’t ever get married? What if I never gave my child a father of any kind?”
“Well, that’s a different issue altogether….That’s about the people in your life, rather than your identity. And that scenario could happen anyway. People die. They leave. Lots of people grow up without a mother or father. So if you didn’t ever marry, then your child would just have you.” He shrugs. “So what?”
“So what?” I say. “Isn’t that sad?”
“Sadder than never being born at all?”