The wait to receive Adam’s AncestryDNA results, let alone Darrin’s, has been exceptionally long and grueling. Typically, results take up to two months to be received. However, due to so many people purchasing kits as gifts over the holidays (yay! more people can unpack their identities and connect with new family!) AncestryDNA’s processing lab has been WAY the heck backed up (boo). Adam’s kit was mailed out at the beginning of February. Darrin’s was mailed and received at the lab the week after. Despite the fact that both kits were technically received as of February 14th, (interestingly? coincidentally? the universe works in mysterious ways…) they didn’t begin to be processed until the end of April. Good Lord. I love this organization, but they need to pick up the pace on that front!
On the morning of my friend’s wedding, I got an email that Adam’s results were in. With only a few seconds of hesitation, I opened the email and clicked into the results. Nothing unusual to report–thank God! His ancestral breakdowns were very similar to mine, and he popped up in my match list as a full-sibling. I briefly scrolled through his match list to see if any other helpful clues were there, but then needed to get ready for the wedding for real.
As happy as I was to see that his results were as expected, I also couldn’t help but feel a bit sad for our Dad. Part of me was holding out hope that, possibly, one of his swimmers had made its way to that last egg. Maybe the third of us would bear his biological mark. But, regardless, we are still and always will be his. He raised us and showed enough love, care, and dedication to put countless biological fathers out there to shame. He is our Dad, always, and regardless of the messiness of the rest of this, I will always be eternally grateful for that fact.
That said, seeing Adam’s results come in jolted me into the reality that it couldn’t be long now before Darrin’s results come in. And how could anyone prepare themselves for that? I didn’t have to deal with it earlier when the tests had just been submitted, and I knew I didn’t have to really worry about it until Adam’s results came back, indicating that Darrin’s were likely only a week behind. How would I feel if his results revealed that he wasn’t the one? That he was only a first cousin once removed, as I was increasingly suspecting after finding more matches with surnames linked to the other Reilly line? And it crushed me to think of what Darrin would be feeling–he really seemed excited that we could be (biologically, of course) his. He had already been so generous to even open his heart to the possibility of us at all, let alone step up to take the test. I really didn’t want to be the cause of any pain or disappointment he might feel if the test showed that we are related only at the cousin level.
But it’s been out of my hands, our hands–it was up to fate now.
A few days later, I got a message from my new-found cousin who I had just met in NYC, Danielle. It was through the 23andMe platform. She had just received her test results. I had forgotten entirely that she had tested with the company at all. When she told me over lunch when we met, I assumed her results would have to come in after Darrin’s. I was wrong.
When I logged into my 23andMe account, there she was on my match list. In the second cousin range.
I was devastated. No, no, no I didn’t want to find out this way! And what would I say to Darrin’s family? Although maybe this was just a fluke–sometimes it happens at that genetic distance for you to share slightly out of typical range DNA levels with a relative. But this was just one more indication that we probably weren’t biologically Darrin’s, but Keith’s.
While I knew it wouldn’t be the end of the world either way, just as I had been holding onto hope that Adam might biologically be my Dad’s, and despite increasing suggestions to the contrary, I have still holding onto hope that we might be Darrin’s biological kids. There are a few reasons for this. For one thing, at least with Darrin, we already knew that he actually wants to know and have some sort of relationship with us. It would still be a complicated thing to navigate, as he wouldn’t be our parent, yet he would be our biological father. For another, if Darrin is our biological father (I’m going to start abbreviating this as BF for now), than we know that we were never any sort of commodity to him. We were never sold.
While I haven’t really talked about that aspect of things here, the thought that your biological father may have literally SOLD you to a another family (albeit through a third-party and before you were fully conceived) feels pretty weird. And, honestly, kind of shitty. It’s also yet another reason why the term sperm “donor” sort of sounds like the wrong terminology. You’re not really “donating” something if you’re getting paid to do it. Now, just because you happen to be getting paid for something doesn’t mean that you’re not also providing a helpful service–many of us in the non-profit sector live in this reality every day. However, I can’t imagine that MOST sperm “donors” would have still chosen to “donate” if they weren’t ALSO being paid.
Regardless of whether or not our BF was paid for both creating and instantly severing his parental connection to us (at least legally), that wouldn’t mean that he’s a bad person. There are many ways to make the same amount of money, and at least this particular way ultimately allowed a new kind of family to be born. Our Dad became our Dad. My Mom got to experience pregnancy and become our Mom. Besides, recent surveys of sperm and egg donors has suggested that many “donors” would have selected an “open donation” if it had been presented as an option–it’s just that anonymous donations have been the only option available in most clinics, certainly until much more recently. Also, just because someone may have prefered to be anonymous originally and may have, at the time, taken the use of their gametes to create a birth child of theirs for someone else lightly, that doesn’t mean that they’re always felt that way since. I could rattle off countless far less significant decisions I’ve made as a 21-year-old that I would love to love to do differently if I only had the chance. That’s just not how time works.
Yet sometimes the universe gives us another chance. That chance is certainly becoming the norm as more and more people choose to test.
Four days after Danielle’s results came in, so did Darrin’s.
Suddenly, there he was on my match list.
But in the cousin section.
We are Keith’s.