“Relatively Speaking: A Tale of DNA Testing” – Margaret Assany

July 29, 2018 – Lay Sermon

“Relatively Speaking” – Margaret Assany

This past year, UUMidland member Margaret Assany’s experience with DNA testing yielded some surprising and life-changing information about her family. She reflects on the power of changing families, new connections, and new selves.

You can find a video of Margaret giving her talk here on youtube!

AUDIO:

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I was raised in a somewhat nuclear family. There was my dad, my mom, and my two younger brothers. I had no reason to think anything was out of the ordinary. I actually thought that we were as typical as could be. I saw some kids only had one mom, or divorced parents. As I grew older, I saw other kids who had more than one mom, or kids who were raised by just one dad. Some have two dads. Some have step-parents. Some have foster-parents. Some are raised by grandparents, aunts, uncles, or siblings.

What struck me was that families can change. I adjusted when my parents divorced. I adjusted when my parents remarried. I didn’t think my family could change much more than that.

Boy, was I wrong.

Last August, I found I was eligible for a research study through 23andme, a DNA analysis company. Many of you have probably heard of it, or similar companies. 23andme would analyze a tube of my saliva for free in exchange for using my data in their research. I like free things! I was also curious to see if my genes carried anything of medical importance. Ancestry wasn’t really a big draw for me, but it would be interesting to look at. I didn’t know what my dad’s heritage was.

So I spit in a tube and a few weeks later, I got an email, telling me that my results were in.

I’d like to preface this by explaining that I’m from a very small, very Caucasian village in rural Maine. Diversity is not our strong suit. If you were anything other than a straight, white, Christian, there was something wrong.

That’s the first thing that came to mind when my ancestry claimed I was 50% Ashkenazi Jewish. It was statistically impossible. Maine’s Jewish population is less than 1%, and most of the Jewish population do not live in rural villages like South Bristol.

I tried to laugh it off. I thought that there had been a mistake. I emailed 23andme to tell them so. My mom and I joked about it, but she seemed to accept that my medical information was correct. I was uneasy with this, since my medical information applied to this Jewish version of me, not the me I knew.

I found that there was a function to look for relatives. I did it, but immediately wished I hadn’t. There were three people listed. Three people listed as half-siblings.

So what does a person do when faced with such life-changing information? I went into denial. I stuck my head into the proverbial hole in the sand. I even managed to forget it until Rachel messaged me.

Rachel was one of the listed half-siblings. She seemed to accept me as a half-sister right away. I balked, but I allowed her to talk to me. She told me that she was conceived through sperm donation. She hadn’t found the donor yet, but she showed me the facebook profiles of nearly a dozen other half-siblings.

It took me a long time to accept this. I did bear a striking similarity to one of the brothers, and there were more subtle characteristics I shared with the others. I tried, instead, to think of other possibilities. Maybe my mom had an affair with this Jewish man, who just happened to be a sperm donor. I didn’t believe my dad was sterile. He had three kids in his first marriage. My mom had no reason to use a sperm donor.

I asked my mother, but her answers were less than satisfactory. You would think someone would give a straight-up yes or no to the question “Was I made with donor sperm?” She avoided my questions. Sometimes, she ignored them outright. I was torn. I wanted to believe her, that she wouldn’t lie to me. But the lack of a straight answer, and my resemblances to my half-siblings, made me wonder. It made me anxious.

Rachel found the donor not long after first messaging me. The sperm donor was a man named Peter. He was a theatre director, of all things. That hit hard, as I adore theatre and have participated in local productions throughout my life. And though I favor my mom in looks, there were pieces of Peter that I knew were in me. We had the same smile. We had the same eyes.

I didn’t contact him at first. I still held out hope that my mom wasn’t hiding anything. At the same time, though, I felt a little jealous as Rachel, and then twin sisters Alana and Bridget, met him. All reported that he was a sweet, easygoing man.

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However, there were more hurdles than that. The woman at the cryobank wanted details such as the clinic my mom went to and the doctor who performed the procedure. I didn’t have any this information. Desperate, I sent my mom a final text, telling her how anxious this situation was making me, and how it wouldn’t change feelings for my main family at all, and how I just needed to know.

She finally explained.

Before I was born, before my dad married my mom, he had three kids. After those three kids, he decided to get a vasectomy. Then he met my mom, who was from a large family and wanted a large family of her own. In rural Maine, donor conception was practically unheard of. My mom learned about it through a couple who struggled with infertility. With my dad’s blessing, she drove almost two hours away to a different doctor than her usual one. She did not want her method of conception on her medical record. She chose a donor who shared hair and eye color with my dad. She chose a donor who was creative and intelligent. She liked that my donor was artistic, which was a quality she didn’t have. She and my dad swore to never tell a soul.

So I guess I threw a wrench into that pact, didn’t I?

I was so shaky after that text, but I was relieved. Rachel, Alana, and Bridget could finally be my sisters. Peter could finally be… what? A sperm donor? Time, perhaps, would tell.

We started talking in earnest. I could finally let myself get attached to all these people. I was scared to before, scared that I would find out that we weren’t related. I was overjoyed to have these new people in my life.

A couple weeks later, my husband and I drove to California, where Peter and many of my siblings live. I met Peter on Thanksgiving day. It was beautiful. I felt a true connection to him. Finally looking into his eyes was eerie. I never realized before that my eyes never looked just like my mom’s or my dad’s. Looking into Peter’s eyes was like looking at my own in a mirror.

I met Rachel, Alana, and another sister named Courtney the next day. We clicked instantly. I’d never had sisters before! My dad had a daughter from his first marriage, but we weren’t terribly close. Now, I had a surplus of sisters!

I also was able to meet my new grandmother, who is almost 92 years old now. She is full of sass and and I can only hope to do half as well as she does at her age. I met new extended family, as well. My new uncle David is the artistic director at a professional theatre. I guess the theatre gene is strong! I also met new aunts and cousins.There is a strong current of creativity that flows through this blood. I’d never known anyone else in my family to have such a love of the arts, and I’d always accepted that it must be a mutation.

Instead, now I have Rachel, who plays bass in a pretty legit band. Alana can create beautiful art. Bridget was a dancer. Mikayla is an extremely talented singer who enjoys musical theatre as much as I do. Jeremy is a pretty witty comedian, though as his sister, I will never tell him how funny he is. Noah is full of ideas for potential businesses. Laine is a writer. Adam is a film critic. Griffin writes scripts.

And to think, just a month before, I had no reason to believe these family members existed at all. I guess my own creativity does have a place. It really makes you wonder about the genetics of creativity.

As a “donor kid”, I’m in a pretty unique situation. Two of the questions I’m usually always asked is, “So what do you consider these people to be?” or “What do you call your donor?”

You’re not going to get the same answer from any two donor kids. Heck, even among my new siblings, the answer varies. For us, the line around our family is no longer so clear-cut. It begs the question, what is a family? Can you love this many people as family? How will it make your original family feel?

Believe it or not, these questions aren’t unique to donor kids. You might experience them when you get married and find yourself swimming in in-laws. You might experience them when a parent remarries and you suddenly have a step-parent, or step-siblings. Maybe you’re the one who remarries and gain step-children. There’s fostering, adoption, or even just friendship so close that you consider them family.

My answer is simple: it’s up to you. Family is what you make of it, and what the others make of it. It’s not uncommon for donor kids to want nothing to do with their donor, and you know what? That’s okay. Family is an individual’s choice. That’s not to say the choice is easy. There has been conflict with my “original” family over this revelation. The outing of a 26-year-old secret created a lot of confusion and hurt. Was the secret mine, or my mother’s? Did I have any right in telling my brothers that they, too, were conceived using donor sperm, and that we are “technically” half-siblings?

My relationships with my “original” brothers actually feels closer now, despite these revelations. Things with my mother are a little more complicated. I know she still feels resentment toward me over this. However, I’m not mad with her for keeping this secret. I understand why she did what she did, but it’s in my own hands now. I’m proud and happy of my new-found family. After all, love is not a zero-sum game, and the heart grows with each new person we love.

Teresa. Jeremy. Jamie. Melanie. Margaret. Mikayla. Laine. Adam. Noah. Rachel. Bridget. Alana. Jonathan. Griffin. Jackie. Brittany. Michael. Courtney. Tyee. Dexter. Natalie. Sidney.

Peter has 22 identified children. 22 unique stories of family. We expect to find more in the coming months and years. We take it as they come. We are full of love for each other, and most of us intend to build relationships with each other in some way, shape, or form. I consider all of them to be my family.

And that other question– “What do you call your donor?” I call him the same thing I call the dad who raised me. I call him the same thing I call my stepdad.

I call him my father.

– Margaret Assany