San Francisco Dreamin'
30 September 2007
Sibling Update - Not Scared Any Longer
Heather from The Wishful Writer comments that she and her partner are getting serious about having kids. Fabulous! (See her comment on my last post.) It was important to us to have a "known donor" as well. But, you know, when you first make the decision, and you're trying to Just.Get.Pregnant, the idea of ever meeting the donor is worlds away. Even so, I have sometimes wondered if we would even "run into" a sibling some day - since we knew there would be a maximum of 10 births possible. But, back then, it was so far into the future of possibilities it didn't seem quite real.
Then a decade passes, and someone on the Great Internet tilted the table a bit by providing a Donor Sibling Registry. All of a sudden, all bets are off. And by mutual agreement we are enabled to get to know half-siblings and their parents. I wonder if the donor looks at the registry... Perhaps he views all this with some trepidation. It will be a while before we know that - unless he reveals himself before the eldest child's eighteenth birthday.
So, back to the here and now.
It turns out that Indiana Mom who contacted us is a single Mom who wanted a child. After a couple email exchanges, we sent her a picture of the girls together taken one afternoon when we were on roadtrip. It is a fun picture, they were playfully hugging one another in the cold wind off the ocean. A few days later Indiana Mom sent us a picture of her daughter at 10 years old (she is 11 years old now). I'll call her "P," since I don't have their permission to expose their identies.
P had the same dark brown hair and bright blue eyes. She is a pretty girl, and JB thinks her eyes look very much like our Cait's (our older daughter's) eyes. I don't know about that. Maybe a little, but P is a bit on the "chunky" side, rather than on the very lean side as are Cait and her sister Zoe. Cait is four months older than P and is a tall beanpole (a term my brother used to call me when I was her age).
Indiana Mom also included a couple of email addresses of other parents. So, I was mulling this around in my head as I set the table for dinner. Then it dawned on me. I knew one of those names. It had stood out but I didn't know why at the time. It needed to roll around in my head until it finally came to me - it was the name of a fairly well-known lawyer in lesbian circles in San Francisco who handles second parent adoptions and tenant disputes. So. She has a son by the same donor.
As we both talk about this, getting used to the idea, it is getting easier to understand, to figure out going forward how we want to handle this hot potato.
(Well, sometimes that is what it feels like - a hot potato!)
We're going to start deliberately opening up the topic a little more than we usually do, a little at a time, to give the girls opportunities to ask questions. Although nearly two years younger, Zoe has been a lot more inquisitive about the donor than her older sister has ever been. I expect she'll be our guiding force.
Viva la familia!
Then a decade passes, and someone on the Great Internet tilted the table a bit by providing a Donor Sibling Registry. All of a sudden, all bets are off. And by mutual agreement we are enabled to get to know half-siblings and their parents. I wonder if the donor looks at the registry... Perhaps he views all this with some trepidation. It will be a while before we know that - unless he reveals himself before the eldest child's eighteenth birthday.
So, back to the here and now.
It turns out that Indiana Mom who contacted us is a single Mom who wanted a child. After a couple email exchanges, we sent her a picture of the girls together taken one afternoon when we were on roadtrip. It is a fun picture, they were playfully hugging one another in the cold wind off the ocean. A few days later Indiana Mom sent us a picture of her daughter at 10 years old (she is 11 years old now). I'll call her "P," since I don't have their permission to expose their identies.
P had the same dark brown hair and bright blue eyes. She is a pretty girl, and JB thinks her eyes look very much like our Cait's (our older daughter's) eyes. I don't know about that. Maybe a little, but P is a bit on the "chunky" side, rather than on the very lean side as are Cait and her sister Zoe. Cait is four months older than P and is a tall beanpole (a term my brother used to call me when I was her age).
Indiana Mom also included a couple of email addresses of other parents. So, I was mulling this around in my head as I set the table for dinner. Then it dawned on me. I knew one of those names. It had stood out but I didn't know why at the time. It needed to roll around in my head until it finally came to me - it was the name of a fairly well-known lawyer in lesbian circles in San Francisco who handles second parent adoptions and tenant disputes. So. She has a son by the same donor.
"JB, look! I recognize this name. She is a lawyer who has published papers on gay and lesbian adoptions."Okay, so sometimes we're not always on the same train of thought - not even on the same track. I put out the salt and pepper and explained,
JB looked at me with a sort of quizzed expression, "But, you've already adopted the girls. Why do we need to see a lawyer?"
"No, no, no. She's one of the names that Indiana Mom sent us - she has a son by the same donor we used! Don't you see - she and her partner are here and accessible!"I could see the lightbulb click "on" over her head.
"Oh! Oh. Hmmm. We gotta think more about that. That makes it all that much more real doesn't it? I mean, it's not just some possibility, it's more real."Sure does.
As we both talk about this, getting used to the idea, it is getting easier to understand, to figure out going forward how we want to handle this hot potato.
(Well, sometimes that is what it feels like - a hot potato!)
We're going to start deliberately opening up the topic a little more than we usually do, a little at a time, to give the girls opportunities to ask questions. Although nearly two years younger, Zoe has been a lot more inquisitive about the donor than her older sister has ever been. I expect she'll be our guiding force.
Viva la familia!
Labels: family
posted by Tawanda at 5:38 PM
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