As it turned out, it was a good thing that I opted to pause before moving forward with contact, because in a few days time, I realized that I had made a mistake. Ugh.
Earlier, I had assumed that the pathway of names I was seeing at the bottom of my AncestryDNA tree search screen was showing me which ancestor branch contained the connection to the surname I had just searched. However, after closer inspection, I found that this was not true–the pathway of names was actually just a listing of the last people in the tree that I had clicked on to investigate further, in order.
Needless to say, things weren’t going too well with my “I’m going to hold off on my search until I’ve caught up on all of my posts for my journey so far” internal plan.
I wasn’t exactly in full-throttle search mode though, either…I more so dabbled off and on.
Given my realization about how the search feature worked, I was feeling a bit discouraged, but I also wasn’t quite back to square one either. I still knew that the Reilly family was the key to my paternity (unless they somehow happened to be maternal matches that I just hadn’t been able to place yet on my Mom’s portion of my family tree…yet still unlikely given the proximity of the matches to Jessie, Nicole, and Brandon), and I had already knocked out several lines.
However, I just wasn’t seeing anything clear-cut. Given the number of dead ends I had been experiencing, I decided to look at the search a little more outside of the box. I had joined the private online Facebook group, “DNA Detectives”, and while I wasn’t ready yet to submit my case to the masses (and to a potential “search angel”), I was learning a lot. One thing I was noticing as a theme was that “non-parental events” were far more common than I ever realized…especially for generations above me. Whether it was wartime babies born out-of-wedlock and adopted off (frequently without any family members ever knowing, since young unwed mothers were often sent away to special “homes” until the baby was born and given away) or just affairs (or, worse, instances of rape) that were successfully hid by a lack in prevalence of DNA testing, I saw story after story of folks finding out that they had a different biological family than they always thought. Many of these folks, like me, took a DNA test for other reasons, and were shocked to find their identities didn’t match up to who they thought they were.
As a result, I had to look at the tree I was working with, and my long list of matches, with new eyes. Virginia Reilly’s “line” was back on the table. As a Catholic woman who never married but was also, as far as I could tell, not a nun…her story left me wondering if maybe there was more to it than what met the eye. I also noticed that she had a record for having traveled (alone, as far as I could tell) via plane from Luxembourg to NYC in 1951…the flight records had no other Reillys listed. What was she doing in Luxembourg, as a single woman traveling alone? Could she have been sent away by her family to Europe as an unwed mother to have a baby, and given it up for adoption? At the time, she was 32 years old. Maybe she was just a really badass lady–which certainly seemed to be the case given what I was able to ascertain about her work history, but regardless a solo trip like that would have been quite unusual for a single female in 1951.
I also had pretty much accepted the fact that the fertility doctor might not have been completely honest regarding the donor’s occupation–or, at least, may not have conducted thorough background checks to ensure that he was, in fact, a doctor as claimed. The more I read up about the regulation practices (or lack thereof) of the donor conception industry, the more I learned how very UNregulated it truly was–and even is today. Of course, it was even less regulated back in the early 80sthan it is right now . Doctors rarely conducted any meaningful background checks, and weren’t in any way legally obligated to do so. Whatever the willing donors put on paper was treated as truth, and people just trusted their doctors. At the time, there wasn’t even any central regulation around how frequently the same man could donate, how many couples his samples could be used to fertilize, or how (if at all) the records would be kept and maintained. According to my mother (and the doctor’s office when I called), all “records” pertaining to a given fertilization were destroyed–not even a donor number would remain (which is what is traditionally provided to both the parents and donor, and is often used by donor conceived people to locate half-siblings).
All this to say, folks in the Reilly clan who I had previously “ruled out” for not having gone to med school, and being too old to have been a “med student” at the time of my conception, were back “in” as possibilities. I also had to entertain the possibility that rather than Jessie and Nicole being 1st cousin once removed (1C1R) and second cousins (2C), respectively, they may actually be one of the other possibilities in their respective categories. It very well may be the case that my donor had his own non-parental event (NPE) somewhere up the line, and was adopted himself, in which case he wouldn’t even show up on Jessie’s tree.
Oy vey.
Shortly after my call with Nicole, I called my Mom to ask her again for the name of her fertility doctor, and any additional information she could give me. At the time, we had a lot of other significant and challenging family matters going on, and she was STRESSED. My question sent her over the edge of her breaking point. She gave me her doctor’s name, but insisted that there was nothing her doctor would be able to tell me anyway, and that she wanted absolutely no part in my search beyond this…
I was devastated, and feeling hurt that she was making no effort to understand where I was coming from, and how badly I needed to know who I was. It struck me that the very desire for a genetic connection to her offspring that led her to donor conception rather than adoption was the very same connection she was denying me to my own biological parent. How could she not see this? And how did a parent’s choice about whether or not to have biological children in their life rightfully outweigh that of their adult children–for life? Why don’t I get to have a say? I’m no longer a child, after all.
Despite feeling shamed and guilty (although I don’t entirely blame my Mother for this–I think it’s hard for her to understand my perspective, and she did have a lot going on), I decided to suck it all up and give her doctor (who was still practicing) a call anyway. Maybe, just maybe, she would have more answers and take pity on me.
Upon dialing, I reached her receptionist. The woman sounded genuinely shocked to hear from me, and it was certainly an awkward conversation! She refused to put me through to the doctor, since I was “not a patient”, just my Mother was, however she said she’d leave a message for the doctor to get back to me. The next day, after hearing nothing, I called again. Same story. Finally, the third day, I got a call back–but it was from the receptionist. She simply said that all she could tell me was that the doctor said they didn’t use a sperm bank, the doctor was probably a med student or resident, and that they didn’t keep any records. I asked if the medical student/resident status of donors had been verified through a background check at the time, and the receptionist said she would speak with the doctor and get back to me.
She never did. Through the entire process, I felt both powerless and furious. All I could do was beg, for my OWN information. I may not have been a patient, but that sperm wasn’t just my Mom’s as the patient, I AM the sperm! It couldn’t be more mine–it IS me!
Yet, as a donor conceived person, at least at present, we have no rights. We just have to be “grateful” that we even exist.
All we have to rely on now are the leaps and bounds of science, the ever-increasing power of DNA testing and internet searches to give us our identities and family connections back.