Drawing
a family tree has always been complicated for me, because I’m never
quite sure which family I’m meant to trace. My real family? That’s
pretty easy. My sister, mother and father, aunts and uncles, grandmas
and grandpas—complicated a bit by divorces and second marriages, but
I’ve been a part of this family for 18 years and it doesn’t take much
effort to detail its various branches. But my biological family is a
different story. Remove all of the second marriages, remove my sister,
who was adopted from India four years after I was born. Remove my
father and his entire side of the family, because I have a donor father
and, although my real father is the only father I’ve ever known, I am
biologically related to a man who exists in my life only as an idea and a
sheet of facts—6’2”, 230 lb, AB- blood type. I don’t even know his
name. My
parents chose my donor father through Fairfax Cryobank, motto: “The
trusted choice in donor sperm.” My parents had only a page of
information to use when choosing between different donors—height,
weight, hair color, eye color, race, family medical history, educational
background. So they chose a man with German ancestry like my real
father, no major history of medical problems, going to graduate school
for economics. And then they paid the Cryobank money and the sperm
arrived in the mail, and nine months later I was born. Growing
up, I knew that I had a donor father like I knew that the earth
revolved around the sun, or that George Washington was the first
president of the US. I have no memory of learning it because it was
always part of my life, something that I never had to be told because it
was never a secret. So, for the first ten or so years of my life,
having a donor father didn’t seem very important. I had my real father
to take care of me, and that was all that mattered. But once I got to
junior high, and my classmates and I were given some assignment to draw
our family trees, and everyone else instantly pulled out their pencils
while I stared at my paper blankly, well, it was then that I started to
realize that maybe I should have some questions. What is my biological
father’s name? What is his job? Does he have a family? Is he even
still alive? this article by Kelsey Weymouth-Little was originally published in the February 12, 2013 issue of the college news.
Fairfax
Cryobank now has an ID donor option, meaning that children of certain
donors can receive identifying information about and even contact their
donors once the children turn 18. But when my parents purchased my
donor father’s sperm, there was no such option, no promise of future
knowledge. During my tumultuous middle school years, the only promise
my parents could make to me was that, when I turned 18, I could legally
call the Cryobank. Call and ask for information. My parents emphasized
that the Cryobank might not have records of my donor father by then
and, even if they did, they would have to obtain his permission before
releasing any information to me, but I desperately clung to the
possibility of any shred of knowledge. I promised myself the day I
turned 18, I would call the Cryobank. Not because I wanted another
father, but because I had a thirst for knowledge, and I wanted to know
something about the person who passed on his genes to me. I wanted to
know where I came from.
this article by Kirsten Adams was originally published in the February 12, 2013 issue of the college news.
To
say that I have been blessed in my 18 years on this Earth would be an
understatement. I am fortunate to have good health, to have never wanted
for anything growing up, to be attending this beautiful college, and to
have friends who I know would do anything for me. Of all of these
immense blessings I have been given, family is the greatest. Though it
looks like a simple word, it is really anything but. What a family is or
whom it includes will undeniably vary based on whom you are talking to
and what events have shaped their lives and families. For me however, my
family is the group of people who have believed in me since I was born,
helped raise and guide me into the young woman I am today, and those
who have unconditionally loved me from the start.
this article by Lady Luciana Charlotte Magdalena Inès Von Gänseblümchen, Marquise de Chevêche was originally published in the February 12, 2013 issue of the college news.
Hello,
again, darlings! After an absolutely chaotic Christmas season, I am
back at Bryn Mawr to recuperate from a very tiring month of throwing
parties. I
set out around the same time your darling editor Ms. Hank went on her
winter travels. Although I normally spend a few days at the Paris Ritz
to recuperate after trans-Atlantic flights (Philippe, the maître
d’hôtel, is simply marvelous), it is closed for renovations, so I flew
directly to one of the family estates in England.
this article by Emma Palitz '16 was originally published in the February 12, 2013 issue of the college news.
It
all started with a mouse on the loose in the Isuzu Trooper. My mom had
reluctantly brought the mouse home for our pet snake, Lucy. It was
Lucy’s last supper before we drove off into the sunset towards
Cooperstown, New York. The trip was a last minute affair, motivated by a
desire to get out of our perpetually humid neighborhood. Unfortunately
for Lucy, we lost track of the mouse by the time we had to leave.
this article by Christina Lisk '14 was originally published in the February 12, 2013 issue of the college news.
I
cannot pretend I understand the bonds shared by band mates,
particularly iconic ones that have shaped our culture. Fans claim to
“know” such bands through reading literature on classic rock, or the
biographies constructed about individual musicians. When I think of the
Beatles and the Rolling Stones, however, I realize what fans “know”
about them is actually very little. Multiple sources can provide facts
in a quest to connect with both life-changing bands, but facts cannot
fully convey what made both bands iconic: an immortal set of familial
bonds.
this article by Michaela Olson '15 was originally published in the February 12, 2013 issue of the college news.
I
was always a little disappointed not to have a younger sister, since my
older sister Abby was pretty mean to me as a kid, and I didn’t have a
younger sibling to turn on. But I got over that when I realized how
annoying a little sister might be, and now I love how close Abby and I
are as each other’s only siblings. When I was about 8 or 9, though, my
best friend gave me Cheaper by the Dozen as a book on tape for my
birthday, and we listened to that in the car continuously, skipping back
to our favorite parts over and over, for probably a year. Our family,
though much smaller than the Gilbreths, mapped onto their story
somewhat. The Gilbreth kids had a kooky, efficiency expert dad who they
could laugh and tell funny stories about with their bemused mother. The
Olson girls have an (affectionately termed) aggressively friendly lawyer
dad, and a good-natured mom who helped us playfully gang up on him. The
idea of having 12 kids was obviously not a feasible plan for my two
full-time working parents, but there seemed to be something wonderful
about having so many brothers and sisters, constant playmates and
friends living under the same roof. I kind of secretly always wished I
had a family like that, and the initial exposure to the Gilbreth family
spawned a lifelong fascination with large families.
this article by Ashley Reid was originally published in the February 12, 2013 issue of the college news.
My
dad and I share lots of qualities, namely that we strongly resemble one
another, a fact I used to resist as a little kid (“But, I don’t want to
look like a boy”), and that the Black Sheep In The Family Disease, or
BSITFD, afflicts the both of us.
this article by Megha Joshi '13 was originally published in the February 12, 2013 issue of the college news.
I
did not like Delhi. At first, at least. Delhi is a difficult city to
get used to, let alone love. There was the unforgiving heat of August
when I first reached the city. My *kurtas*
would be soaked in sweat any given time of the day. There were traffic
lanes that did not mean anything to the drivers. The lack of sidewalks,
always. Dust everywhere. And then there were rickshaw drivers whose
meters were always mysteriously broken and who wanted to charge you a
hundred rupees just to drive you five minutes down the street. I wanted
to taser them all down.
this article by Christine Wheaton '13 was originally published in the February 12, 2013 issue of the college news.
“Help! I can’t get out of the bathroom!” Now,
even under ordinary circumstances, that is not something I’d want to be
saying. As it was, I found myself yelling this to my new host sister
who I’d just met my first day out of the United States. She broke me out with a butter knife.
this interview conducted by Ivy Gray-Klein '14 was originally published in the December 11, 2012 issue of the college news.
Loyal college news readers may recall an article I wrote two years ago
about a paneled discussion at Kelly Writers House featuring Kathleen
Hanna, Sara Marcus, Katty Otto, and Beth Warshaw-Duncan. While fawning
over Hanna, I was also introduced to Katy Otto, a pillar of
Philadelphia’s independent music scene and my local shero. A recent
assignment for my journalism class served as the perfect opportunity for
me to interview Otto. We met up at West Philly’s Satellite Café where
we discussed trans-inclusive spaces, listening to Tori Amos in our
teenage bedrooms, and what it means to be 35 and still in a “girl band.”
