I tell my students, who are concerned with the question of betrayal, that when it comes to memoir, there is no such thing as absolute truth—only the truth that is singularly their own. I say this not to release them from responsibility but to illuminate the subjectivity of our inner lives. One person’s experience is not another’s.
It is the stories we tell ourselves that make up who we are. They may be the truth, or they may have been told so many times that they’ve become truth.
For my whole life, I believed that I was tall, dark skinned and dark haired due to a genetic anomaly. Inherited from some great uncle, or explained by the fact that we had two tall (albeit fair) cousins on my Dad’s side. We all joked on the regular that my Mom had had an illicit affair with the mailman. My brother and I look alike, and we are born four years apart, so it didn’t add to any doubt. I was asked regularly where I got my height, asked by strangers if I was Lebanese, and when I was travelling, I seemed to be a chameleon, fitting into the look of wherever I was. Spanish. Greek. Italian. Mexican. Middle Eastern.
People who uncover massive family secrets often say that they felt their whole lives like something was off. If I’m honest, I don’t think I felt that way. At least not that I remember. It is easy to rewrite history and say that my intuition was sending me signs. Yet, it never crossed my mind to doubt. It never occured to me that my parents were keeping a fundamental secret in plain sight – from almost everyone, including me and my brother.
What never fails to draw me in, however, are secrets. Secrets within families. Secrets we keep out of shame, or self-protectiveness, or denial. Secrets and their corrosive power. Secrets we keep from one another in the name of love.
On March 2, 2018, I went out for lunch with my Mom.
The day I learned the truth about who I am. Or more aptly, who I am not. I sat with my mother, and over a hummus platter, in a quiet restaurant, I found out that my dad was not my biological father. Of course it is the hummus platter that I remember.
My brother and I were conceived via sperm donor at the Ottawa Civic Hospital, using artificial insemination. At the time, the process was unregulated so there is no paper trail, no donor number, and no records. What we do know is that the donor was likely a medical student.
I wish I could say that my Mom told me directly. I wish I could say I looked across the table and saw a woman with a plan. Instead, all she could do was answer yes or no questions. She never apologized. I became an adult and she became a child.
Was I still me? I felt revulsion. I felt claustrophobic in my own skin. For a few moments I thought I might have a panic attack. I felt like every cell in my body was foreign to me. Then I went numb, emotionless. Remarkably calm. I had an out of body experience — my body separated and I was floating above myself, looking down. That damn hummus platter and homemade crackers blissfully unaware of the absurdity of the reveal.
My Mom got up to go the bathroom and asked if I would still be there when she got back. The 35 years of betrayal had not yet registered with me. In those few moments to myself, I knew my life would never be the same. Memories of my life, of jokes we had made, of my dark skin tone, of my height… all came flooding in. I look nothing like the other Fleming children. It seemed so obvious now.
When I first moved abroad, many people told me that people who live overseas are running away from something. Had that impulse to flee been because I knew that I didn’t quite fit? That my story wasn’t as clear-cut as my little nuclear family? These are the stories of movies and memoirs, not normal people like me. How did I not feel it? How did I not know? How did I miss the glaring and obvious fact that was staring right back at me? Since I’ve pieced together the details of my story, I’ve been desperate to remember. Desperate to remember any details or clues that I missed. But how can we remember what we did not even know to be true?
I have been wanting to write about this for a very long time; but it is so layered, and it also personally impacts many people in my life. However, it is my story – an integral part of my story – and I want to be able to tell it. To be clear, and to protect people that I love, I am not angry that my parents used a donor to conceive me. My Dad is very much my Dad. I am proud to be donor conceived. If they hadn’t made that bold, badass decision back in the early 1980s, I wouldn’t exist. But, life is complicated, and it hasn’t been an easy ride. No doubt, getting re-diagnosed with cancer so shortly after finding this out added fuel to the fire. I’ve always been passionate and skilled at verbal sparring and that has not made it easy for my parents, especially with the initial stance of defensiveness.
Over time, I am learning to love my new story. My parents were deeply yearning to become parents. I empathize with that at the most fundamental level. They knew nothing of this man who was the donor, who gave them the greatest gift. The situation has been a doozy, not just because of the reveal itself, but because of the layers and complications. The fact that we found out so much later in life, the grief wrapped up in illness and loss, and the resulting information found through DNA testing. Layers unveiling. The roots of my family tree are more of a forest.
Back at the restaurant, my Mom received a text message that my granny on my Dad’s side had died. She was 98 years old. My first thought was that I probably have her good genes.
I had already forgotten. I may have inherited her strong and fearless personality, but not her genes. It takes time to rewrite our stories. I am still making sense of how this all changes how I see myself, my identity and my understanding of family.
Is who we are the same as who we believe ourselves to be?
When I was in my Mom’s belly, my nickname was TUB, which stood for the unknown baby. They always told me it was because they didn’t know if I was a boy or a girl. Now, the nickname is thick with irony. The unknown baby. The unknown donor. The unknown story.
The unknown.
*This is my favorite photo from when I was a baby, taken by my Mom. The eyes are a window into the soul; they tell a million stories. There is so much this girl didn’t know but there was one thing she did know for sure — she was loved, and she still is.
