So yesterday I was talking to Giacomo Dulalli and my brother or father somehow came up, and I clarified, as I usually do, the fact that my father is not my biological father and my brother is really only my half-brother. He and I were both fertilized with donor sperm, though from different men. Jay was really surprised and interested in it, and so I gave him the rundown on in utero as opposed to in vitro fertilization, the reasons, etc. To me, it's always just been who I am, and never really a big deal to me. Jay then made me tell everyone at school, and they were just as interested. It was interesting to me that it would be so interesting to anyone else, and they had some questions that I couldn't really answer. I told them that I had known as long as I could remember that my father wasn't 'really' my father, that it wasnt a big deal to me, etc. But I asked my mother--in case anyone doesn't know, my parents are divorced; I live with my mother--and she told me all about it.
My father--my legal father, Jim Earnshaw--had mumps as a teenager. Mumps (the 'kissing disease') usually affects the salivary glands, swelling them terribly, but in pubescent or postpubescent males it can also affect the testicles, causing orchitis, a painful swelling of those particular organs. A possible result of this--though a very rare one, apparently--is infertility or sterility, and Jim was unlucky.
So my father was sterile--and that phrase can show you how I've internalized all this; 'my FATHER was sterile,' I say--and so after several years of trying unsuccesfully to have a child, Jim and Cathy (my mother) went to their doctor to learn their options. Jay called me a 'child of science,' saying sort of jokingly that God made my father sterile because he didn't want to be born, and this was a real concern for my parents. They wondered if using scientific methods wouldn't be contrary to God's will--fortunately for me, their church friends and spiritual leaders didn't attempt to convince them it was so. They ended up of the opinion that God gave humanity these techniques, and that if He really didn't want us, my brother and me, to be born, he wouldn't let them work. So they gave it a try. In 1983, artificial fertilization was apparently fairly new: they had to go to London (Ontario), and this was before the advent of frozen sperm. So they monitored my mother's temperature, and when she was ovulating, they would call her, call the donor, the donor would come in and leave his specimen, she would arrive about an honor later, the doctor would put the semen in with a needle--I had thought that this was in utero fertilization, but apparently normally it's put at the entrance to the cervix, where it would be during intercourse; it's only placed directly in the uterus in certain special cases--and she would wait, hips up, for a few hours. So this went on for months and months, with no visible success, and my mother was beginning to become impatient, and she asked her doctor when it might be time to stop--for how long do you keep trying? They decided to give it a couple more months, and the next month, miracle of miracles, she became pregnant with my brother James.
Now I said yesterday, and implied earlier in this post, that my parents had told me as soon as I was capable of understanding, because they were an enlightened couple, and they knew that keeping a secret like this would be a very bad idea, and not really conducive to healthy family relationships. Apparently I was wrong on this count.
In the early days of artificial fertilization, it was looked at, as were many diseases, disorders, or problems, as something of a shameful secret to be kept at all costs. The doctors and counsellors suggested that James and I--and indeed anybody else--never need know that Jim Earnshaw was not our biological father. My mother didn't even tell her mother, and they tell each other everything. As far as anyone was concerned, James and I were Jim and Cathy's children; the only people who knew otherwise were the church people my mother had consulted and the doctors. I'll get back to this later.
So James had to be conceived with fresh sperm, likely donated by a medical student at the university hospital, but by the time I came along, the use of frozen semen had become commonplace. It was still mostly students, but a movement towards a wider range of donors was beginning. Nowadays they keep track of everything, and donors are required to disclose their personal information, so that the child, when they come of age, can find them if they wish. It's a good thing that I don't particularly want to find my biological father, because all we know about him is this (at the time of donation):
Undergraduate student
5'11"
155 lbs.
Hazel eyes
Brown hair
Medium complexion
O- blood
If I were really interested, I could likely track him down, but I don't think it would accomplish anything.
So for years James and I though Jim was our father, and that was okay. But then Jim and Cathy's married life became markedly less than blissful. Things degenerated and degenerated and degenerated, and it began to become clear that this deception was a big reason. They didn't tell anyone about their children, they didn't tell us, and most importantly, they never talked about it amongst themselves. You can imagine how being unable to talk about such a big issue would lead to an inability to talk about anything less significant--or anything at all, really. Jim had a lot of problems with anger, and they couldn't talk about it. Cathy worried about the kids, and they didn't talk about it. Eventually things came to a head, and Jim and Cathy separated.
Cathy and the kids went to see a family psychiatrist named Dr. Garry Shomair. It was surprising for me to hear that Dr. Shomair--a man who I only remember for the Nintendo Entertainment System in his office--has had such a great influence on my family life. Dr. Shomair was one of the new enlightened generation who realized that keeping such a significant thing secret and a healthy, honest family relationship were mutually exclusive. Cathy was amenable to such persuasion; she was especially afraid that Jim, in his anger, might reveal the secret of our heritage in a harmful way. Cathy and Dr. Shomair tried to determine the best way to tell the children, and they knew that it would be better if Cathy and Jim did it together.
By this time, Jim and Cathy weren't speaking, so Cathy asked Dr. Shomair to help her write a letter to Jim in order to persuade him to come. They wrote the letter, and sent it to Jim, and, as people are wont to do during divorce proceedings, he can hardly be blamed, Jim took it to his lawyer immediately, and the lawyer set upon it, and picked it apart, seeing it as an entirely unreasonable request, looking at it as a way for Cathy to bring the children to her side, to drive a wedge between them and their father (as if the wedge wasn't already there, but that's another story altogether and one I don't want to tell), and all kinds of other paranoid lawlery things.
So Cathy was alone when she told us. Dr. Shomair had found a children's book of sorts that tells a kid everything they need to know about their unnatural heritage (too much sincerity at a go, I need to break it up; excuse this outburst) and prompts questions. I was eight or nine, so James was twelve or thirteen, and so we both sat and read the book with her, and since I was eight, I didn't really understand it, so when she asked us if we had questions, I apparently went and played off in the corner while James asked some questions.
But apparently I adjusted quite well to the idea, because look at me now. I can tell everyone that I see that my father is not my genetic sire, that my brother is my half-brother, and it doesn't really matter to me. I don't much like my father, but that's not because he's not my father; it's because we disagree on several key issues, as parents and children often do. And things are much better than they were.
So, I don't know, food for thought, I guess. More about me and my family than you wanted to know, I'd wager.
