Our Father

after a pause for ailing

(My son and I had the flu, overlapping mostly, so we lay on the couch for a week and watched The Amazing Race. We were achy and coughing, but it was actually a sweet time.)

Maybe that last post took it out of me, suppressed my immune system.

Current status: Still befuddled.

It’s been over three months and most days I have to relearn all this. There are parts that I am used to and others I have to pick up over and over and still don’t understand.

I’ve always been able to moderate my feelings and manage my responses, often before I even let something fully enter my awareness. I am the queen of detachment and disassociation. Maybe not detachment—that sounds intentional or at least something “good” that is practiced—Buddhist, I guess.

When I was a teenager I went for three years without crying. Maybe it was more. I went even longer in my twenties. I couldn’t stand it.

I didn’t like being caught off guard the way I was. It’s funny, though, because it was all there in front of me, literally, on the screen, for years. How many times did my brother not show up the way he was supposed to, and for how long could I decide those first cousins and messages about family surnames were mistakes?

Yesterday I watched “Our Father”, currently trending on Netflix. So, friends, yes I saw it; you don’t have to ask me or tell me about it. Thank you though. Yes, I am glad my donor wasn’t a creeper and that I don’t have any half siblings besides these three brothers, the one I grew up with, the one I haven’t met, and the one I will never meet.

Some of the documentary subjects’ parents had told them they were donor conceived so that part wasn’t a surprise to them. The number of siblings and eventual disclosure of the donor and process of donation was the devastation. Others didn’t know they were DC (donor conceived.) So they found out about the creepiness and their DC status at the same time.

So many of these people mentioned being confused by messages on 23 and Me and Ancestry. Same with unfamiliar cousins. It makes sense that we don’t see things that can’t possibly apply to us or make any sort of sense.

Spring in the desert is gone. The saguaros are blooming. It hit 105 yesterday. A couple of featherless sparrows broken on the porch eight feet below the nest in the eaves. I’m not sure if anything bloomed besides the globe mallow. I missed the whole season. I keep trying to catch up and it’s not working.