Will the man be shocked? Will he reply? Will he even remember that he donated sperm way back when? Will this contact ruin his life? They absolutely don’t want to ruin the man’s life. Now what? Do they write him a letter and mail it? Do they e-mail him? Do they phone? Drop by unannounced? Do they do nothing? Spare a thought for the person right now wondering to themselves: Exactly how do I approach this other man? This “sperm donor”? After feverish trawls through long lists of DNA cousins and with the help of an amateur genealogist on Facebook, they have managed to figure out the identity of this “anonymous” man. The intense love is juxtaposed with intense anger: Their parents lied to them their entire life.
They love their dad and mom intensely, but still look in the mirror these days and find themselves wondering where those ears came from, or that smirk, or that interest in the planets that no one else in the family seems to share. They don’t want to hurt their dad – the father who raised them – or the mother who kept the secret alongside him.
They are praying everything can be normal, for just one more year.
They are worried it will somehow bubble up in conversation, or be revealed in some non-verbal way, before they’re ready to cope. This person doesn’t know how to tell their dad that they know this fact, and so they haven’t, yet.
