"Don’t you have an interesting life!" said my mother. It seemed to be the best she could do at short notice. I guess there’s not an established etiquette for when your daughter’s partner is a sperm donor for a same-sex couple. And here was me looking for subjects to talk about around the Christmas table that wouldn’t cause a hoo ha.
The New York Post recommends talking about Paul Rudd, who has just been named the sexiest man of the year. You could also try:
The weather.
Traffic: full of Aucklanders, finally allowed to leave their city (welcome to the South Island, and thank you).
Hats: although they do keep the sun off your face, a form of self-protection, they could be seen as oppression by people who don’t like being told what’s good for them.
Babies.
Motivated by the injustice of the big fertility companies’ prohibitive cost and discrimination against those who don’t have the right plumbing, the Casanova has decided to be a pot of white gold at the end of the LGBTQ+ rainbow for the second time. And while the child will be biologically his, he makes no claim. The child belongs to its mothers, although he is prepared to be there in the future should he or she want to meet him. New Zealand has a chronic shortage of sperm donors, causing unnecessary heartache for couples longing to have a child. The issue has gone on for decades, the country’s small population and strict donor laws are cited as things standing in the way, that and the number of men who specify that their sperm cannot be used by lesbian couples.
I didn’t mind in the slightest I said, when he asked me how I’d feel about a directed donation (when the couple know the donor). I’ll knit booties, I said. But I do have a history of failing to think things through and I can’t actually knit.
I imagined it might involve standing in a circle around him, the women holding hands, someone blowing into a conch while we chanted to manifest the masculine power. It wasn’t quite like that. However, as the baby-making weekend approached I started to feel a little weird. I couldn’t pin down the feeling. Was it jealousy? I do suffer from retrospective jealousy (how DARE you have had a life before me!?). I don’t own my boyfriend’s semen, of course, I’m just the current careful lady driver ... mind you, given how valuable viable sperm is on the fertility market, I can see I’ve been a little cavalier with it.
I’m not going to have another child, that ship has sailed, and I felt a little sad about it: you meet someone who’s perfect for you, and the timing’s all wrong. Also, I felt a bit tragic about the shambolic way I’d gone about things, of - despite how fantastic it turned out - never having had the luxury of a planned pregnancy. I guess I am jealous, of someone with the income and stability to do Motherhood deliberately, instead of in a state of denial and making it up as you go, after the GP poked the hard mound of your stomach and said, "What did you think this was?".
"Um. What am I supposed to do while you’re ...?"
"Doing the thing?"
"Yeah."
"Read a book?" he said. "It’s only a five-minute job. I’ll just go into the other room, it’s not a big deal, try not to over think it. My only involvement is to hand someone a cup."
He went off to do the thing.
It was a bit awkward. We women stood around, like the three Graces with pants on. I chatted too much and listened so hard for noises in the other room my ears popped. He came out holding a small specimen container and put it in the bathroom. That was it. We all hugged. "I washed my hands," he said. "Just so you know."
So, Merry Christmas. After a bit of a s*** year, nothing beats the feeling you get when you give someone something you know they’ll really really love.
