Several days had passed since I revealed the truth to my brother, but I still hadn’t spoken to my parents about it. I mean, is there really a natural way to bring something like this up? Like, “Hey, Mom and Dad, so…what’s up with the whole “Dad not being our biological father” thing?” Hard to imagine that going smoothly. Granted, I was also just being a little bit chickenshit, and still just as scared as I was before that they might not tell me the truth. That they would be offended. That I would hurt them. That they would hurt me.
After talking about it with a few friends, I decided that I would try to bring it up with my Mom first. It seemed (to me) that she might not be as fearful of the question, since the question wasn’t directly about her–she was still clearly my biological parent. I knew she would never have cheated on my father (as much as a reasonable person could ever know–there were things about her past that would have made infidelity on her part incredibly unlikely), so it’s not like I would be bringing up my inquiry in a way that would hint at that and make her feel defensive. It seemed like she would have less to risk by finally telling me the truth. Indeed, I was a woman without a plan, but figured I’d play it by ear, letting fate dictate the best time to intervene–that or let my curiosity and increasingly heavy desire to know the truth break my fears.
On Monday, my Mom let me know that she was making a trip to the nursing home to visit my Pop Pop (her father). I asked if I could join, and she was glad to have the company.
Before making the trek into South Jersey, we stopped at the local drug store to pick up miscellaneous items for him. It was getting close to Christmas by this point, and he had always LOVED decorating his house for the holiday, so we picked up a few things to add holiday cheer to his new abode. This is what family does.
We got back into the car, and started driving across the bridge into New Jersey.
As we drove along, we caught up on her side of the family–my aunt and uncle, their kids, and what all was new in their lives. At some point over the course of those lefts and rights, my cousin’s pregnancy was brought up–she was having Irish twins! (Pregnant again almost immediately after giving birth.) My Mom mentioned how surprising the second pregnancy was to the family, especially given that we had all originally thought that my cousin would struggle to conceive, as my Mom did, due to the condition they both dealt with (polycystic ovarian syndrome).
GOLD. MINE. Here was the entryway I had been looking for. It was now or chickenshit.
Me: “So, I know that you had to be on fertility drugs in order for you to get pregnant. Is there anything else you two had to do in order to conceive?”
Mom: *gripping steering wheel* “Nope!”
We had just finished crossing the bridge, and were now following signs to get to the highway.
Me: “So, I know that Dad had cancer before we were born, and sometimes that impacts fertility. Did you two have to use artificial insemination or anything in order to get pregnant?”
Mom: *gripping the wheel tighter and cringing slightly* “Nope!”
At this point, we were just starting to merge onto the highway (not my Mother’s favorite thing to do, mind you).
Me: “So, you didn’t have to, like, mix in a sperm donor’s sample to increase the chances or anything?”
Mom: *Maintaining the cringe, and tightening the death-grip on the wheel* “Nope!”
Me: “Oh, okay. So, you know how a few years ago you took that DNA test to see your ancestry regional breakdown? Like how German, British, Scottish, and Irish you were?”
Mom: “Yeaaaaa?”
Me: “Well, you know that I’ve been asking you and James about different family members so I could build out our family tree on that side. I’ve just always been interested in knowing about that kind of stuff. A few friends of mine had posted on Facebook about taking a DNA test like yours and how they had really cool regional breakdowns that they weren’t expecting, like 1% Asian or 5% African or something when they were otherwise like really white. I just thought that was so cool, so I decided to tested, too, to see what my regional breakdown would be.”
“But when I got my results back, they said that I was like…I forget, I think maybe 50% British, 40% Irish, and 10% Scandinavian or something. And that was really surprising, because I know that Dad’s side of the family is really well researched, and that they’re from like Austria, Russia, Poland…all places in Western Europe, and I didn’t see any of that in my results.”
Mom: *Eyes bulging. The cringe is real. The cringe is real. Impossible to grip the wheel harder if she were an Olympic athlete.* “Welllll….” she said.
Me: “Look, Mom. I know that this isn’t something you’d prefer to talk about, but I’m hoping that you can be honest with me. I just want to know the truth.”
Mom: *Clearly pained, and trying desperately to figure out how to do the right thing* “Lor…” *heavy sigh* “I feel bad because your Dad’s not here and it’s not really my thing to tell…”
Me: “Mom, I know, I do, but the thing is, I already pretty much know. You’re not really even telling me at this point. I mean, SCIENCE and math, you know? It just doesn’t add up.”
“I just need to hear it from you, from my MOM, what’s going on. Please.”
She finally broke. Early on in their marriage, she explained, my Dad had been diagnosed with stage 4 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. They didn’t even know if he would live. The last thing they were thinking of was preserving samples of his sperm–the doctors were just focused on helping him survive. Thankfully, he did . However, when they finally had survived this terrifying beginning to their marriage and tried to start a family, over and over again they found themselves unable to conceive.
Eventually, as I knew, they gave up on trying and instead decided to adopt a little girl. They were so happy to finally move on and have the family they’d been waiting for. Only their happiness was short-lived–after having the little girl for several months and falling in love with that precious little baby, the birth mother suddenly changed her mind and decided to take her back. My parents tried everything to try to keep her, but recent legal rulings relevant to their case had found in favor of the birth mother. They had to accept this fate and move on. It was very, very hard, especially on my Mother. She still talks about that little girl that she loved with all of her heart to this day.
Afterward, they decided to conceive one more time, but taking on a new, more extreme strategy. Artificial insemination via a sperm donor. The fertility doctor who my Mom had been seeing, (and whom she still sees for her general health, to this day) told my parents that the donor had light brown hair, blue eyes, and was a medical student at the hospital where they received their treatments. My Mom told me that that’s all she was told, and that all records related to the procedure had been destroyed.
My heart sunk to know the truth, but I was also relieved. Finally, I had the truth, or the beginnings of it, anyhow.
I knew it was big for my Mom to reveal what she did–she is a very private person. She told me that no one knew about any of this, that the only people she and my Dad had told were his Mother and two brothers. Literally no one, not her parents, not her siblings, not any of her closest friends, had ever known. I asked her why this was, and she just explained again that it wasn’t any of anyone’s business, that it wasn’t something at the time to be talked about, and that she didn’t always trust others to keep private matters truly private.
As I blog about this. *Sigh*.
She asked me if I planned on talking to my Dad about it. I told her that I did want to, but just him and me, sometime while I was home, although I didn’t know exactly when. She asked if anyone else knew, and I told her about how I had called my aunt as soon as I got my results in. My Mom wasn’t especially pleased, and was hoping I wouldn’t follow-up with her on what I had learned. My aunt is very social, and much more open about things that happen in her life. That’s not a trait that my Mom wanted when it came to her own secrets. Only this secret, as much as she had always conceived as hers, wasn’t just her own–not anymore than my AncestryDNA results were exclusively mine, as opposed to equally owned by my triplet brothers.
I also told her that my brother, James, knew what I knew, and explained why I decided to tell him. She explained her perspective on not telling him; her fertility doctor had advised my Mom and Dad to never tell, that they would be doing more harm than good. Given that my brother wasn’t feeling well at the time that he confronted my parents, she felt it best to deny the truth, to keep it in.
Interestingly enough, her fertility doctor did, however, later tell my Mom that daughters always figure things out first. My Mom laughed at how right she was. I silently distrusted anything this doctor had said about the donor records being destroyed, or, if I’m being honest, that my Mom was being entirely truthful that she had said it. After all, it took 31 years, several times asked, and a preponderance of evidence for my Mom to come clean–not to her sister, not to her father, but to ME–about a truth that was fundamentally my own.
Finally on the same page, we both marveled at how British and Irish I was–and Scandinavian, ha! How cool! But why hadn’t German shown up? After all, that’s what she thought she was most. I assured her that this was, definitively my DNA and hers (several common surnames had cropped up), and that while we may have ancestors who lived in Germany, it’s very possible that the family line had migrated there originally from the British isles.
Everything felt light and airy–free–as we pulled up to the nursing home. Everything about the visit felt richer, deeper.
The last frontier felt miles away–revealing what I now knew to my father.
Yes! Real connection at last. Keep going…