The first thing I felt was shock – mixed with an undercurrent of pleasure that the message was grammatically correct, writes Peter Ellenstein. Photo / 123rf
It was a young woman named Rachel who changed my life forever. I still remember the moment - 10.55am on October 6, 2017.
I was sitting in the cafe of the Ritz Hotel in San Francisco when a Facebook message pinged on my mobile phone. “Hi Peter,” it said. “I am messaging you under very strange circumstances.
“This is a very sensitive subject... but to give you a bit of my background, I was born in 1994 due to in-vitro fertilisation. The reason I am messaging you is that I believe you may have been the donor.”
The first thing I felt was shock, mixed with an undercurrent of pleasure that the message was grammatically correct. Then I freaked out. Rushing back to my hotel room, I forwarded the message to my wife and siblings. “Could this be a scam?” replied my sister, echoing my own thoughts.
But even in this early panic, I knew it could very well be true. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, while I was trying to make it as a theatre producer and artistic director in Los Angeles, my home town, I had been a frequent visitor to two sperm banks. It was a good way to raise money: I was given at least $45 per donation, up to five times a week.
Over five or six years, I must have made hundreds of donations, which afforded me my dream of starting a theatre company.
There are few regulations governing who can donate sperm in the US. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine guidelines limit a donor to 25 live births per population area of 850,000, although this is not enforced by law. To my knowledge there’s no central tracking.
At the time, the clinic told me that the donations were anonymous, though I agreed that any offspring could track me down in the event of a medical emergency - if they needed my bone marrow for a transplant, for example. So I went away and mostly forgot all about it.
Over the following years, I criss-crossed the country, working as an actor, producer and director. I met my wife when I was 48 - our marriage lasted eight years. I never raised children of my own. My wife had a daughter before we met and I became close with her: to my mind we had a ready-made family.
I was ambivalent about having my “own” children, though willing if I was in the right relationship at the right time. Sadly, in 2017, my marriage started to fail, just around the time that Rachel contacted me.
She was 23 at the time, the daughter of a single mother. She told me she had been trying to find me since she was 8.
After her message arrived, I rang the sperm bank, who told me they had not revealed my identity to anyone, but other details about me had been made available: my date of birth, height, weight, my career in the performing arts.
It later transpired that Rachel had undertaken a mammoth detective task in order to find me, putting various pieces together and eventually tracking me down via a film industry website.
Fascination took over, and I replied. Over a day of texts back and forth, Rachel and I discovered some weird parallels. Like me, she had graduated early from high school, chosen not to go to college and to pursue an artist’s life - she was a musician who also worked in music production. Like me, she loved the jazz guitarist Joe Pass.
I suggested a video chat. From the minute that I locked eyes with Rachel - eyes that were the same as mine - I was able to think of nothing else. I wanted to know her: she opened a different part of my heart and brain that had not existed before, a way of being in the world that I’d never previously contemplated.
Partway through the conversation, Rachel said: “You should probably know there are more of us.” My response was: “Oh! This is so overwhelming - don’t tell me.”
Rachel and I met the next day at the house of my friend: we’d chosen it because it was neutral territory. When I arrived, she told me she could tell immediately I was her father because I bumped into the table.
This clumsiness was clearly genetic given her mother was a ballerina. We laughed and hugged and cried in amazement and kept stopping to stare at one another. It was so emotional that my friend’s housekeeper, who happened to be there, was in tears.
It was then that I finally felt ready to ask about the other children. “I know about the twins,” said Rachel. “They’re great.” Twins?! But I was soon to discover there were triplets too. It was a lot of information to process.
Two weeks later, Rachel and I met again and she read me descriptions of the other 11 children she currently knew about, who had all connected via the Donor Sibling Registry and the DNA ancestry company 23andMe. They included Michael, one of the triplets and a sailor in the Navy, and Tyee, who was studying environmental science in Ecuador.
While I didn’t yet feel ready to meet the others, I thought I soon would, so I started to prepare by reading online articles such as “Seven things your donor kids could want”.
Previous studies had spoken about the different things a child might be looking for, from a simple medical and biological history all the way up to a paternal relationship. I decided I would remain open to whatever each one wanted - they were all young adults by then and I’d take their lead.
Still, I had a lot of hesitation at the beginning. Meeting Rachel was one thing, but when I learnt how many there were, I wasn’t sure I could handle it. I started questioning - did I have enough emotional bandwidth?
By the end of November, I’d met four of the girls. We had a Thanksgiving party and seeing them talking to each other gave me such pleasure: in some way, I was responsible for these lives. My mother, brother and sister were there too.
Mom, who is now 97, is amused and thrilled by the whole thing. Her short-term memory isn’t very good, so she often asks me how many I have and how many she’s met (close to 20 of them, at the last count). She doesn’t see well, but she enjoys sharing stories with them.
Early on in the process, I found out I was a grandfather too - now that was a wild idea. The exciting part is that I now get to see a bit of those grandchildren growing up, an experience that I didn’t have with any of the children.
My children have now become the most important thing in my life.
In all, I have 37 children that I know of and currently I’ve met 34 of them. They range in age from Jameson, who’s now 35, to Sidney, now 23, who was 17 when I met him. The twins and my son Alex were born four days apart. There are two Brittanys.
They come from various backgrounds: some are only children, some have siblings from other donors. A few have two moms - one has four. And others are from nuclear families, but the father has often left the picture. Many of the mothers are Jewish - I’m also Jewish.
Most of us have qualities in common too: dogged determination, a love of literature, open-minded values. We wave our arms around when we get excited. Jamie, Jeremy and Dexter resemble me the most, physically; Melanie and Griffin share my love of wordplay and debate.
When I look at my daughters Courtney and Brittany, it’s like looking in a mirror. But ultimately, Rachel - the daughter who found me and brought us all together - is probably the one I’m most similar to. She has my smile and, like me, is full of optimism.
We also process the world in the same sort of way - we both think we are always right, and both can be bull-headed, with tunnel vision.
Most live in the US, but Mikayla lives in France and Rachel and I visited her there, on a trip where we went parasailing in Cannes together. I’ve taken three trips to Europe and visited one child in China. As for those based here, I’ve travelled the country meeting them: to St Louis, Maine, Oregon. I’ve paid for some to come to L.A. too.
I’m a connector by nature, so this all gives me enormous pleasure. I’ve set a couple of them up for job meetings with acquaintances. One of my daughters is investing in property, so I gave her a contact in the business.
Another came to stay after splitting up with her husband. When I met my current partner, Dasha, four and a half years ago, I told her this crazy story in our first conversation; it is a lot to get one’s head around. She has made good friends with some of the children and went on a trip with one of my daughters.
As for what they call me, it varies: Pops, Old Man, “my biological father”, but most call me Peter.
It hasn’t been plain sailing all the time. When I knew about only 13 of them, I hoped they’d all get on, but that was optimistic and after the initial flurry of togetherness, the differences in personality began to show.
I do have a tricky relationship with a couple of the children. One of my sons is very similar to me - a quick brain, but argumentative in a way that pushes people away. Sometimes I’ve had to set boundaries with them - one took to calling me constantly and felt rejected when I couldn’t fulfil their emotional needs.
One of the three I haven’t met is very unwell: we’ve never spoken and it doesn’t feel appropriate to make contact, but I follow her progress online.
I’m happy to meet their parents too, if that’s what the children want. I’ve met 10 of the moms and a couple of the dads. Most are very nice, and a few sent me lovely notes thanking me for their children. I’m grateful they are happy, but a little embarrassed about it.
We have a big Facebook group for the children and another one to which they can add their parents, siblings and significant others, as well as an online chat group.
Some of the conversations are interesting. One of my daughters was raised Catholic and I didn’t agree with her views on subjects like birth control, but I did listen and we parted as better friends, saying: “There’s everything else in the world we can connect on: just not this.”
These new relationships have made me reflect deeply. Until this point in my life, I had never thought about my mortality. Now I have started to consider: what do I leave in the world? What kind of example am I as a father, as a human?
But from the first moment, none of my kids have pressed me or made me feel obligated to support them. I wish I had more money to help those who need it or make visits easier. (I’ve loaned small amounts to several of them though.)
In a perfect world, I’d have a gigantic home where they could all stay and hang out together, but I’ve lived in the same little house since 2018. I drive a Prius, but when we have big gatherings, I sometimes rent a van.
Some people - both friends and strangers - who hear about us get upset about the nomenclature. A few have wondered if I really deserve the epithet “father”. It never leaves my mind that I didn’t raise these individuals. That’s why I don’t consider myself a “parent”. But they are still my children.
Many biological fathers treat their children appallingly. Others found by their offspring later in life have sent “cease and desist” letters. But in our case, these relationships have overwhelmingly become a positive force.
Plus, though we all bring our own baggage, we don’t have any baggage with each other since we’ve only known each other for a few years. We can start fresh - a good thing.
Since Rachel first made contact with me six years ago, there have been two weddings and two graduations: I have nine grandchildren.
There are 37 chances for someone to change my nappies when I get old. And I didn’t even have to change theirs.
As told to Miranda Levy
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