Donor Selected!

And we have seed!!!

Well, technically we don't have it yet. And technically we aren't 100% sure that it is still available. But we know what we want and are hoping for the best, and will cross any other bridges when we get to them.

Last Thursday, we went out to dinner with our fellow lesbian-couple friends A&A who have a 20-month-old and a 3-year-old. The little one was conceived by an anonymous donor, and the older one was conceived using a known donor. Our friends were asking us about where we were in the whole process and we told them we had begun looking at donor profiles. We told them a bit about the main traits we were looking for, and they both jumped in excitedly to say that our description matched their little one's donor and they would have no weirdness around us using that donor as well.

Nicole and I looked at each other and knew right away that we were on the same page with this - an immediate excitement and sense of "oh YES, of course, this is right!!" None of us were uncomfortable or weirded out by it, and in fact we all felt a sense of comfort in knowing we'd know at least one other child born of this donor, as opposed to just having no idea. We were also in instant agreement that our kids would not be raised with any sense of being siblings or half-siblings, but also not planning on hiding anything from them. It will just always be what it is - hey, your friend N had the same donor as you. Cool. And they just are never, ever allowed to date! :)

So we have our sperm - Jewish, dark hair and eyes, college-educated, of both Eastern and Western European descent, pretty solid health history, and willing to be known by the child when the child turns 18 if the child so wishes. Everything that has been important to us! And on top of that, it's at a sperm bank that is a little cheaper than the others we've been looking at, and we didn't have to pay to view the profiles or the baby photo. Our friends had already done that and showed us on their phone at dinner.

The donor is from California and was just donating while in school here in NYC. I like that he probably isn't still donating in NYC, and if he is still donating, it is probably now in California. However, this also means we don't know if there is still a supply from him here. But we are certainly excited and hopeful!

I love, love, love the nontraditional ways of queer family-making. It can be so communal and loving and supportive, and I just adore it.

Seeking: Short Nerdy Jew (with strong swimmers)

I came home two nights ago to Nicole looking at sperm donor profiles online. Yes, that’s right. She took initiative on this.

Nicole has been a few steps behind me in eagerness for this undertaking, hence my needing this blog as an outlet for my anticipation. But recently she has started to catch up, and it continues to take me by pleased surprise. We have casually played around with names for several months now, and she recently suggested that we may be in a position to start trying to get pregnant at the end of the year. I gently reminded her that if we want to start trying in December, we need to start planning several months beforehand. I left it at that, as I find it better to plant a seed and then walk away and let it ruminate and grow for a bit. (This is how I got on the path to conversion with her alongside me in renewed Jewish observance!) This way she can work it out in her own mind and decide at her own pace, without coercion or pressure.

So a few days later, I came home to see her on her laptop in the kitchen. Not an unusual sight. I had come home late from work so she had already eaten. I got my plate and joined her at the table, assuming she was playing her favorite online game. And suddenly she said, “This one has a French Canadian parent!” I said, “This who?” She said, “This donor.” Wait, WHAT??

We spent the next half hour perusing the list that got much shorter once I insisted she screen for Jewish heritage first. She has said in the past that she doesn’t want her child to have her “Jewish features” and wants them to have my blue eyes. Well, they can have a fair shot at that, but only as much as they would if the two of us could create a child together. I want our child to share as many like traits from the two of us as is possible. I don’t want to screen for desired qualities that aren’t true to her. And as I said to her, for me “Jewish features” – whatever that may be! – is what is desirable to me. I adore everything about my wife, even that which makes her cringe, and I would love nothing more than to see even some of that in our child. I have no inclination to try to create a child that looks just like me.

So this is the beginning of our sperm search. Because she was already in a good place with all of this, exhibiting curiosity and interest, I also gently broached the topic of an initial consultation at a fertility clinic, which we should do in the fall if we want to start trying in December. She didn’t balk at that or panic, which was a really good sign.

Maybe this blog will finally be about our path to pregnancy!

Tisha B'Av

Today is Tisha B'Av, a Jewish national day of mourning for the destruction of both temples. For strict observers, it involves not listening to music or celebrating or having fun for three weeks, fasting the first and last day (24 hours without food OR water), nine days of abstaining from meat, and more. For Reform Jews...well, I've recently learned that many say, "Tisha B'what??"

In trying to find my own path to making Tisha B'Av personally meaningful over the past few weeks, I was told by one person, "Reforms don't really do that," while others asked what the day is. One person at my synagogue sitting behind me in services last week said, "I only ever heard the name at Jewish camp as a kid, and didn't know what it was," while someone in Torah study said, "As a kid I always heard people say stay away from water, which was hard in summer, and I didn't understand why."

Well, this year Rabbi educated those in attendance, and it was so wonderful to see the level of curiosity, interest, and interaction among congregants around this topic. She offered explanation for why many Reform Jews are not so observant of this day, and engaged us in discussion around how we can make it meaningful to us so that it does not just go by completely ignored.

Friday evening, Rabbi's sermon was about the Haftarah portion which was relevant to Tisha B'Av, and she used that to get conversation going around it. In the summer, services have a smaller turnout and are held in another room (not in the sanctuary) where it is cooler. This means a more intimate and casual gathering, and it was so smart to utilize this forum to get people involved in the sermon. Rabbi explained that many Reforms moved away from observing Tisha B'Av because we don't agree with such intensive mourning around the destruction of the temples in a way that implies our wish to have them back. Reform Jews are very proud of the Diaspora and wouldn't necessarily wish for all Jews to be in Israel and at the temple. Reform Jews also enjoy the way Jewish spirituality currently manifests and would not wish to return to a time of priests and animal sacrifices. Thus, such severe mourning over the temples' destruction and the atmosphere of those times feels inauthentic.

However, the destruction of the temple is just one of many, many times throughout history in which Jews were persecuted, in which a group in power attempted to completely obliterate the Jewish people. Tisha B'Av provides an opportunity to mourn this persecution, the loss of Jewish lives, and the suppression of Jewish culture. It encourages us to be contemplative and to let ourselves FEEL the pain of this. It reminds us of our painful history so that we can increase our joy and appreciation the rest of the year and so that we don't forget where we have come from and what we have survived. It can even remind us of where persecution still exists, against us or against others.

How can I make that meaningful for me? How can I spend three weeks feeling this in a way that is meaningful and not emptily ritualistic?

I can tell you fasting didn't work for me! I tried the first day and was so miserable and cranky. I felt physically unwell which affected my job performance (which affects people's lives) and my interactions with those around me. So not only was it causing harm, but my resentment around how I was feeling certainly didn't aid me in mourning and contemplating.

I think next year I may observe similarly to how I used to observe Lent as a Catholic. I will not give up all opportunities for joy in the beautiful summer I am given, but I will give up something so that I feel and can stay sobered by its loss for that period of time. I can also continue to take on opportunities for staying mentally and emotionally engaged in the meaning of Tisha B'Av, which I did this year by attending Rabbi's beautiful Lamentations study and by attending a temple field trip to the little Holocaust Museum out on Long Island.

I'm finding my balance, and am grateful for the dialogue I can have with my peers and my rabbi to help me find the path of observance that is right for me.

The Defeat of DOMA and the Jewish Response

A few weeks ago, two days after my birthday, the Defense of Marriage Act which permitted federal discrimination against LGBT individuals, denying hundreds of rights, was repealed. For anyone emotionally invested in this decision and on the edges of their seats for months, they will always remember where they were when they heard that Wednesday morning.

There is much work still to be done. There are too many states where discrimination against same-sex individuals and couples is still legally sanctioned. But it is HUGE that we are now federally protected. This ensures safety for us in so many arenas that were previously denied. Disturbingly, soooo many people I know had not even heard of DOMA and thought the state legalization had solved everything.

At that Friday's Shabbat service, Rabbi worked this into her sermon. She spoke about that week's Torah portion, which just happened to be about four sisters who stood up to a law that would deny them their deceased father's inheritance since there were no sons. They didn't meekly plead, but they also didn't create a ruckus. They just said, "we should get this, and this is why." They defended their case. They were assertive and wanted justice. Moses appealed directly to God, who said that the sisters were right and the law should be changed.

Rabbi expounded on this to say that God WANTS us to challenge laws if they are unfair. (Oh look, a basis for Reform Judaism in the Torah!!) Laws were created for a certain purpose, with intentions to be protective and just, but if they ever become unjust as circumstances and times change, we have a right and a responsibility to amend them. This is much of what I love about Reform Judaism (along with, among other things, wanting people to keep ritual observance meaningful rather than just doing what is proscribed by religious law even when it is habitual and unmeaningful).

Rabbi related this to the ordination of women, and then in the end brought up DOMA. She said, "Some say same-sex relationships are wrong because of what is written in the Torah. I say God has been waiting for us to make it right."

This is not just unique to our amazing rabbi. In synagogues across the country, communities celebrated and rabbis addressed this in their sermons with joy and satisfaction. It wasn't just gay people celebrating, but Jews. For Jews, any gain in social justice is a communal gain.

Do you understand why I feel so in love and at home?

<3

The Big 3-0

(I wrote this the day after my birthday and neglected to actually post it - so it is from almost two weeks ago.)

Yesterday was my 30th birthday. I am not the person who complains about getting older every year. On the contrary, I always thank God for blessing me with another year of life. When I was in my early twenties, a fellow camp counselor, who had just gotten engaged and was sweet and full of joy and life and kindness, was killed at the age of 22 by a drunk driver. It completely shook me up, and I have not been ungrateful for any birthdays since (and honestly wasn’t before, either, just because I was very young and wasn’t feeling age).

Now, all I feel is a little bit of restlessness with goals that may not have been achieved, or things I thought would be happening by a certain age that aren’t. I think this year’s is obvious, and having a milestone birthday really makes it sink in. I think young women set high standards for what 30 should be – what should have been accomplished, and what we expect our thirties to look like. I had wanted to have my first child at 30, and a year or so ago, settled for being pregnant 30. Now I would settle even for being able to say we are TRYING to get pregnant at 30. But we aren’t there.

I won’t go further into that because I want to stay focused on my gratitude, both for life and for the people in my life who made me feel so, so loved this year.

I was pretty disappointed initially, because the two things I really wanted for my birthday wouldn’t be happening. The first was ziplining. It’s on my “bucket list” and I had tried to arrange for a group of my friends to go on Saturday, but it didn’t work out. Everyone had other commitments such as planned vacations. It took a lot of work to try to coordinate it amongst everyone, and then to be the only one who booked was upsetting. I had to cancel my reservation and we all agreed to try again at the end of the summer, but obviously it wouldn’t be happening my birthday weekend.

The second was going to see the play Once. I’ve been dying to see it, and we never go to shows just because it’s not in our budget while we are always saving money for The Next Big Thing (wedding, house, now babies). I had been set on this for months. However, tickets were far more expensive than we had anticipated and we just felt we shouldn’t spend on that right now. For the short amount of time between that and Nicole coming up with another idea, I just felt so disappointed and let down. I admit I had a miniature pity party. But my birthday ended up being so, so wonderful.

Nicole booked an excursion for us in Juneau, which was the one town that no one in our family had booked anything. She then invited the rest of my family if they chose, while understanding they may not want to spend the money to go. My parents agreed to accompany us almost immediately, and my sister and brother-in-law decided to minutes before the excursion. It was SO much fun having all of us together. We went to a salmon hatchery, Mendenhall Glacier, and a salmon bake, and it was an absolute blast. I felt so loved that they would all come on an excursion that they would not otherwise have done.

Back in Seattle after the cruise, my parents took Nicole and me to lunch at the top of the Space Needle. The restaurant rotates sloooowly so that you get to see the entire Seattle landscape during your meal. It was so beautiful. Because it rotates, some people leave notes on the sill which doesn’t move so that others will find them. Unbeknownst to me, my mother had put a note there saying they were from SC and were taking their daughter from NYC out to lunch for her 30th birthday. When I found the note, there was a “Happy Birthday” wish from someone in another state. By the end of the meal when we retrieved it, there were two more messages, one from Australia and one from Copenhagen, Denmark. So cool!

The Sunday before my birthday, our friend C took us on a picnic at the Nassau County Art Museum’s grounds, which were gorgeous and empty due to construction that week inside the museum. We had tuna salad, chicken salad, watermelon, cherries, grape leaves, and lemonade. C also brought a mini cake that was made in a Montauk bakery and had only whole ingredients in it. After lunch, we went to the Queens County Museum, where C bought me a cute gardening mug and a pail of alfalfa to feed the alpacas, sheep, and goats. Llamas and alpacas are my favorite animal and it did my soul good to pet and feed one.

Sunday evening, Nicole took me to dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant that is only a block from our house. On Saturday, I had asked if we could go over to her parents’ for dinner the next night because I like being around them for my birthday. Apparently she had already planned our dinner out, so she called them last-minute and asked if they would join us. Her parents, sister, and sister’s boyfriend were able to go. They gave me gift cards for Starbucks and Amazon and paid for the meal. So sweet of them.

Monday, my actual birthday, my coworkers had lunch with me (including a co-supervisor who was on vacation and came in just for this) and Allyson baked me a lemon raspberry cake from scratch. My best friend N sent flowers to the office for me. That evening, my friend C was driving down to pick up another friend on their way to Florida and stopped in to have frozen yogurt at Red Mango with us, which she treated.

Next week when we get out early the day before July 4th, N is taking me to a movie and dinner. Then later in the month, another friend J is taking me to the movies. (See a pattern here? Movies are my favorite thing and something my wife can’t do as it makes her motion sick.)

I feel so loved and spoiled.

Teaching Culture

I was reading an article the other day on Kveller (an online Jewish parenting site where various people blog) about the writer’s decision to send her youngest child to a Jewish day school after her two older children had gone to a non-Jewish private school. (The non-Jewish school was for boys only, and her youngest is a girl so she had to look elsewhere.) She spoke about all the incredible, advanced learning her boys have gotten that made her never question that decision, and then how she felt watching her daughter completely comfortable with songs, prayers, and rituals in the synagogue that her sons were awkward with or disengaged from.

This led to an interesting discussion in the comments among parents who have chosen to send their children to Jewish day schools and those who chose not to. One parent said that she resented the implication that kids couldn’t be raised to be comfortably observant Jews if they are in public school (or a non-Jewish private school). Another responded and said that this is true if you are able to maintain a strong Jewish home, but that she was not raised very observantly and her husband is not Jewish, so while she feels comfortable with the culture of Judaism that is a part of her family’s everyday life, she didn’t feel so comfortable with teaching the faith and religion and DID feel the need for the help of a Jewish day school for that. She stated that when you are not able to teach your kids much about religion at home, two hours of Hebrew school twice a week just doesn’t cut it to help your kids be grounded in their faith.

This whole conversation fascinated me (and there were many other people involved in it), but this in particular resonated with me in that I am kind of the opposite. I read so much about people having the “culture” of Judaism but not the religion, while I feel I have more of the religion and have to be taught the culture.

Right before my conversion in April, my mother-in-law revealed to me that while her grandmother was very observant, her mother wasn’t, so she was not raised with the religion of Judaism. She eventually felt the need for her children to have what she didn’t, and that is when she attempted to start involving them in a local synagogue. However, my wife and her brother were teenagers and felt uncomfortable with this and were just never interested in participating. My wife’s sister, however, who was seven years younger, immediately gravitated toward it and began attending Hebrew school and became a bat mitzvah. When my mother-in-law attended events at the synagogue for her youngest child, she says she felt an immediate connection. She felt that despite not feeling so familiar with the religion, she immediately felt like she was with her people: the way they looked, the way they acted, their mannerisms, the traditions, the sayings, the superstitions. This is what made her feel like a Jew for the first time, to realize that she IS a Jew no matter what.

THIS is what I feel the need to teach and pass on to my children. I feel 100% comfortable with the religion of Judaism. It’s not so different from the faith I grew up with, after all, and no different from what I have believed for the past ten years of my life. That part of conversion was nearly seamless for me. It is the culture that I have had to become accustomed to. It is the culture that I crave, that I want to be at home with. I am an eager immigrant who received my citizenship but will still always feel like an outsider in a way. This is not in a bad way – I don’t feel ostracized or isolated or left out. I just feel an eagerness to have what I can’t, because my love and sense of belonging is so strong.

I want my kids to grow up identifying with their Jewish heritage not just in their faith and religious practices, but in the way we communicate as a family that matches what they see in other Jewish families, patterns of relating that Jews can affectionately joke about because they know it about themselves and see how it sets them apart. And this is yet another (if newly realized) reason that I want to raise our family with an active temple life. They will get some of the culture at home; some of it has rubbed off on Nicole from her upbringing by a Jewish mother (certainly her way of communicating, which is very different from mine!), some of it has rubbed off on both of us from our exposure to our own Jewish community at our temple, and some of it we learn piece by piece and incorporate into our lives as we go along without even meaning to or realizing it. But what we miss, I hope they are able to pick up elsewhere. And if not…then they will grow up with their mixed culture of being an observant Jew raised by a convert and a former agnostic, and that’s okay too. It will all be part of their story and will make them the beautiful people that they will be.

Edit: I was talking to my friend Allyson about this over lunch yesterday, and she said that because I chose Judaism and because of my passion for it and the way I am already practicing it, my kids will have much more of a culture than unfortunately most American born Jews are giving their kids. Hearing that perspective put me a bit more at ease too.

Our "Last Hurrah" (as my wife has named it)

For my parents' 35th wedding anniversary, our entire family (three of us "kids" and our spouses) went on a cruise to Alaska. This has been spoken about and planned for close to two years, and booked for over a year. Nicole and I spent a few days in Seattle on our own before the cruise, and then we had a full week of fun and relaxation with my family. It was amazing, and I could have journaled a full entry every day if I'd had access to Blogger. I did bring a hard journal, but ended up using it more for written prayers in the form of letters to God. Totally unplanned but was a perfect and natural way to express my appreciation of all that was around me, and considering it is my most comfortable form of expression, I'm surprised I haven't done this sooner.

But I digress. Since I did not journal while I was away, I need to keep this to a normal length, and will try to do so by just bullet-pointing the highlights for me to cherish further down the road.

• The Inn at the Market - We splurged on two nights at this sweet inn right in the thick of Pike Place Market. We used the beautiful rooftop patio overlooking Puget Sound so many times in those couple of days, and almost always had it to ourselves.
• Seattle Aquarium - It hung over the sound, used fresh water directly from the sound for its exhibits, and had wave pools for fish to mimic what they're used to in shallow waters.
• Shabbat service in Seattle, and Shabbat non-service on the ship - I will have to do a separate post for this! I love, love, love making field trips to other synagogues, and travel is the perfect opportunity since we are torn from our beloved home temple anyway.
• Spending laidback, quality bonding time with my sister-in-law and brother-in-law, and likewise having us kids watch our spouses bond and interact. Irreplaceable.
• Being served hot toddies in our room to enjoy under blankets on our balcony while we watched the calving of glaciers right before our very eyes and heard the thunder of their crash into the ocean.
• Taking a train through the mountains to a snow-capped peak, winding our way on a track that would be far too dangerous for roads and cars, feeling totally enveloped by the pristine Alaskan wilderness.
• Seeing humpback whales breaching while we were at breakfast.
• The abundance of bald eagles in their natural habitat, perched on pilings and icebergs.
• Mendenhall Glacier - WOW.
• Nicole taking me on an excursion to a salmon bake as an early birthday present, and being accompanied by my parents, sister, and brother-in-law as well. Eating fresh-caught wild Alaskan salmon cooked over an alderwood fire and then toasting marshmallows in the rain.
• 11:08 PM sunset and 3:53 AM sunrise
• Floating in Lake Union on a duck tour in Seattle, with a view of the Space Needle, houseboats, kayakers, and a seaplane taking off.
• Dinner at the top of the Space Needle with my wife and parents as an early birthday celebration while we could all be together. Rotating around in the restaurant and finding a note my mom had planted on the stationary sill which now held birthday greetings from tourists from Copenhagen and Australia.
• Sunshiney days in Seattle while it thunderstormed back in NYC.

Thankful that I didn't keep a regular journal while I was there...there would be a heck of a lot of transcription going on right now. These highlights will have to do. And since a picture is worth 1000 words...