My mom was full of sayings, actually my dad too. “Honesty is the best policy” was one. I guess it was a deep one for me, for I’ve always tried to be what I refer to as a “straight” shooter. I have a friend who says somewhere deep down inside, she always knew, even if what she deeply knew could not be fully articulated. Eventually, the truth came out. It usually does.
So, maybe I also knew that secrets never keep very well. As ignorant as we were, we never kept the truth of how they were conceived from our sons. Following advice I had seen offered, we told them abbreviated origin stories when they were yet very young, even if these were stories they were too young to fully grasp. After I learned our egg donor had done a 23 and Me test, I bought one for my husband and then test kits for both boys. They were older now and we could honestly discuss the whole situation with them and they could comprehend it fully. 23 and Me gives them a private channel of communication with their egg donor (genetic mother), if they chose. They have also spent time with her and her youngest son, when they were yet very young, though they’ve only seen photos of the other two. Distance and financial constraints negate our having very much contact.
Since learning my adoptee parents’ origin stories (they both were adopted), I’ve also learned a lot about all things adoption and that extends into donor conceived persons’ stories, as well as what is referred to as a non-parent event – meaning that someone discovers that at least one (or sometimes both) of the parents they thought were theirs – were not. This can be painful and difficult for one to wrap their mind around, especially if this knowledge comes late in life. That is what happened to Jon Baime when he was 54 years old.
His subsequent documentary is available at LINK>video on demand. This can be rented from the Microsoft Store, Apple TV, Amazon Video, Vudu, Google Play Movies, YouTube, or Spectrum On Demand.
Baime shares his journey in the interview with LINK>Severance Magazine. It is this interview where I got the title of today’s blog. It begins with this background – Imagine yourself in this scenario. You tell your 92-year-old father that you want to take a DNA test to learn more about your heritage. Your father says, “I don’t want you to take that test until after I’m dead!” You ask why, and he can’t or won’t tell you. What do you do? Naturally, you take the test, and your father says, “Fine, piss on my wish,” and you spend weeks waiting for the results and wondering what’s the big mystery.
That’s what happened to Jon Baime when he was 54-years old. You might think he shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the man he believed to be his father wasn’t related in any way, that he was in fact donor conceived, that his parents had been keeping a secret from him, about him. But even if you were raised in a family that keeps secrets, as he was, where children were often told that certain matters were none of their business—and even if you’ve always known that something in your family wasn’t quite adding up—it’s always a shock to find out your identity is not what you’ve always believed it to be, that your relationships changed in the moment you received your test results, that your whole world flipped upside down and there’s suddenly so much you don’t know that your head spins.
During the four years after his DNA surprise, he used his professional skills as an Atlanta-based producer of non-fiction projects, to unravel the family’s secrets and lies -researching and scrambling through a trove of family history in the form of photos and home movies, and traveling the country to interview his older brothers (also donor conceived with mixed reactions) and his new siblings (who had appeared as DNA matches). One sees why genetic mirroring can be important to a person in the photo below.
Baime and his biological father, Harrison.
Missing Mom 