My adult daughter learned the identity of her father before I did, myself.
Her half-brother, carried by my former partner and conceived from the same anonymous sperm donor, started the ball rolling by registering a sample of his saliva with 23andMe. After that, Google did the rest.
By the time the week of discovery was over, photos of ten other half-siblings had arrived along with photos of her donor and his parents. My daughter looks like all her half-sisters and bears an extraordinary resemblance to her paternal grandfather.
All the siblings are close in age and scattered throughout the U.S. Some welcomed contact, others turned sharply away from the news and the prospect of an expanded family. For them, family by love, not blood, was enough.
This was true for the brother she already knew. He sent his saliva in simply to find out more about his heritage. But, as things turned out, family by love was not enough for my daughter.
I always believed that having been raised by her biological, loving mother and with her half-sibling would suffice. I now know my daughter concealed a simmering desire to locate her donor. I turned a blind-eye out of fear of what her discovery might mean for us both.
I suspect her curiosity was fueled in part by our disparate personalities and appearances: she's an extroverted, artistic, natural beauty with warm brown eyes, a broad smile, and an athletic and slim figure. I'm an introvert, calculated, more academic than artistic, with the build of a common draft-horse and with striking blue eyes.
Her father, we now know, is a sculptor, graphic designer, and Libertarian, with a rogue streak. He likes and owns guns and participates in Renaissance festivals. He's nothing I imagined him to be and, in many ways, neither is she.
When I asked her, what's been the most significant thing about having met her biological father, she said, "Well, think of it this way - when I meet someone new and they ask me about my family and my parents, now I can actually tell them."
The simplicity of her statement belies the depth of its impact..
The burden of loose ends has been taken off my daughter’s shoulders. She has a changed and sturdier sense of peace and belonging. Since her discovery, she's moved back towards me and the family she's always known with a more open and appreciative heart.
Evelyn Resh works and writes in western Massachusetts.
