The New Yorker - USA (2022-01-31)

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THENEWYORKER,JANUARY31, 2022 25


this hope in her late thirties. I had never
wanted a child. I think this was because
I’d felt I had nothing to offer. My sense
that I was worthless had come, in part,
from my mother, who I believe is men-
tally ill (a diagnosis she disagrees with).
I remember her telling me that people
wouldn’t even spit on me if it weren’t
for her. (She now denies this, along with
most of my other recollections of our
conversations.) Another part had come
from the guilt of being healthy while
my brother was not. As a child, when
I walked out of the house in the morn-
ing and went down the street to where
the school bus stopped, I was always
conscious that my poor damaged brother
was still at home, that all day my mother
would be cleaning him, exercising him.
I was also burdened with the knowl-
edge that I did not want to switch places
with my brother, and this was what
made me feel that I was a bad person,
that I had to hide my selfishness, that
it would be best if I was not observed.
We are hurt in relationships, and we
are healed in them, too. After I bought
a thirteen-hundred-dollar watch and
then had a panic attack at having spent
so much money, my wife did not judge
me, either for the panic attack or for
spending at the edge of what we could
afford. I once had an erotic dream about
an affair and told my wife; she pointed
out that I was writing a short story about
an affair. One of the reasons I began
thinking about the actuality of having
a child was that I was overflowing with
love for my wife and wanted a place to
put that love.
Christine and I started investigat-
ing I.V.F. after a colleague at Duke off-
handedly mentioned a friend who was
in her sixties and had just given birth.
Our minds snagged on this anecdote.
We phoned the woman, a professor, and
she was cheerful and practical, giving
us a list of doctors to consult and tell-
ing us which clinics would not work
with women over fifty. One of the doc-
tors we ended up speaking with told us
that some clinics would not work with
couples whose combined age was over
a hundred.
We e-mailed fertility clinics and then
had Zoom appointments with the places
that gave one free consulting session.
Christine would put on makeup before
these conversations.


Along with the overflow of love I was
experiencing, another reason I wanted
to have a child was that I wanted to
make my parents happy.
I see my parents as tormented peo-
ple. My father grew up in a troubled
home, and if he hears good news he
shakes the news suspiciously until the
happiness dies. When I told him I had
got tenure, he suggested that I was fool-
ish to be happy since I still wouldn’t earn
much money. Once, my mother wanted
to get hearing aids, and he told her,
“Why? If, by mistake, some good news
does come for you, I will write it down.”
I’ve always perceived my mother to
be very anxious, and her anxiety seems
to manifest itself as a need for control.
By constantly letting me know that I
am a disappointment, she makes me
desperate to please her. My brother
died in 2012, and, soon after, my par-
ents and I went to India to scatter his
ashes in the Ganges. Each morning
while we were there, I visited an el-
derly aunt whose husband had Parkin-
son’s and had also lost his mind. I would
sit with her for an hour. I did this be-
cause I remembered what it was like
when I was living with my parents, how
a night of taking care of a sick person
leaves you feeling isolated. “Who are
you showing off for?” my mother asked
me one morning as I was leaving to
see the aunt.
After decades of trying to get my
parents to change, I now want them to
feel seen. I call them every day. I tell
them what I am doing and then ignore
their hysterical responses. In the weeks
after I first told my mother that I was
dating Christine, I would call and she
would accuse me of being a sexual de-
viant, because she opposes premarital
sex. She would then hang up on me.
All this is, of course, exhausting. And,
of course, every time I try to make my
parents happy and fail, it makes me feel
foolish for continuing to try.
I did not tell my parents that Chris-
tine and I were investigating the pos-
sibility of I.V.F. until Christine had un-
dergone various tests and we knew that
pregnancy was possible.
A few months after the process of
inquiry began, I told my mother what
we were planning. I was walking back
from the mailbox when I phoned her.
It was a sunny afternoon, and workers

were putting down pine needles on a
neighbor’s yard to prevent erosion. I was
nervous, and I had called while outside
so that whatever emotions I experienced
wouldn’t contaminate my home.
“Christine and I are talking to doc-
tors about using I.V.F.”
My mother didn’t respond.
The workers raked the pine needles.
I wondered if my mother had heard
me. I repeated myself.
“What’s there to say?” she said.
I felt hurt, as if I had given her a
present and she had put it aside with-
out unwrapping it.
When I entered the house, I told my
wife how my mother had responded.
“She’s scared,” Christine said.
Several times during the next few
weeks, I raised the topic of the possi-
ble baby with my mother. Each time,
she failed to ask any follow-up ques-
tions. I finally asked her if she was afraid
of the evil eye thwarting our hopes.
Though she insists that she isn’t super-
stitious, she quickly said yes, and fell si-
lent, as if to avoid drawing the atten-
tion of bad fortune.

M


y wife and I entered the world
of donor eggs. This is a strangely
exploitative place, full of Web sites with
names such as goldeneggdonation.com.
The cost of acquiring donor eggs can
easily be in the tens of thousands of
dollars—a friend of mine who is Black
and is married to a Black woman said
that an acquaintance had offered them
fertilized eggs for free and they were
considering these, despite the fact that
the woman offering the eggs was Thai
and he and his wife very much wanted
to raise Black children.
My first response to learning the
price of donor eggs was to try to per-
suade my wife to ask her younger friends
to donate their own. There was one
woman who was getting her doctorate
at Oxford and who, to me, seemed worth
approaching. Christine was aghast at
the suggestion. My second response was
to argue that we should use leftover un-
fertilized eggs from other people’s I.V.F.
attempts. These eggs are kept frozen,
and we were told that their success rate
could be lower than that of freshly har-
vested ones. My wife said she was un-
willing to get pumped full of hormones
only to use an egg that was less than
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