I’m going to try to find my biological father.
* * *
I’ve always imagined him this way: wife, two or three kids, ranch-style house in suburban Philadelphia. Inconspicuous car that he drives to his white-collar job each day, then parks in his slightly uphill-sloping driveway at night.
Sometimes, he looks like a slightly grayer, slightly jowlier version of me – medium height, thin-framed, with a small, middle-aged-man’s paunch. Other times, he’s softer, with a lower center of gravity. He always has curly hair, but only the second guy has glasses.
He’s the main breadwinner in his family; his wife is either a housewife or works part-time at home. His kids are really young – ten, twelve, maybe younger. They’re good kids – they might have an Xbox somewhere, but they don’t care that much about it. They live to play in the yard, making up games and bum-rushing dad when he gets home from work.
* * *
Now that I write all of this stuff out, it seems clear that this is a dad from a different era, from forty or fifty years ago. Like a Wonder Years scene updated to allow for modern cars, technology, and more equal male-female relations. This man and his family don’t ever go anywhere; they seem to live in an eternal present.
* * *
That’s the default image, anyway, the one that rushes to the surface first. When I try to picture him more actively, though – when I take into account his age or try to visualize what a version of me in thirty years might look like, I get…I don’t know. Not nothing, exactly. But not something, either.
* * *
There are some aspects of this stuff that I’ve thought about quite a bit. Others, though, I haven’t considered at all.
Just the other day, for example, my friend Hannah pointed out that this donor may be the biological parent of other kids besides me – perhaps lots of them. (I don’t know the first thing about sperm donation, but at least in the abstract, it would seem weird if I were his only offspring through the fertility clinic.)
Hannah also pointed out that one or more of these other children may have had the same idea that I’ve had – to try to find their biological father. Maybe they’ve even succeeded – hell, maybe they’re all looking for me now.
* * *
Or perhaps he’s moved to Berlin. Or been imprisoned. Or passed away.
* * *
Anyway, I’m going to do what I can to find him. I’ve got some basic information about the clinic and the doctors, and I’m going to start making some phone calls.
